A few mornings ago, taking out a bag of old clothes to be sorted and donated turned out to be a different kind of cleaning than I thought it was going to be. When I unzipped that bag I was not looking to take down cobwebs from distant memories and wipe the dust off some windows way back in the past. That's exactly what I ended up doing. As I took out each layer of clothes, each new one revealed more landmark events in my life and in the ones entwined with mine. It was like a time capsule.
MICA interview, the first job interview, the first salwar suit - a blue one I got stitched for a birthday when I was in college, the t-shirt I was wearing when S and I first made out. A few of my and jijo's favorite ones. I don't remember doing it but clearly as I sorted out the clothes I didn't need (or fit) anymore and packed them away to be sent to Goonj; I kept keeping these few aside in this separate bag. Looking at them put me in a strange mood, part nostalgia and part melancholy. These scraps of memories made me think that even though I'm making new ones everyday there is a completely different and irreplaceable quality about these old ones. The clothes may be out of fashion now and may not fit anymore, the memories - they are always going to fit. They are from a time when I was really young, free and fearless; they remind me how it felt to be like that. Today the fearlessness and freedom are still very much there but they mean totally different things. Its a strange sense of loss, may be this is how it feels - to finally accept that you are a grown up and knowing that there's no way out of this one :)
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