Reading through the “Souvenir Rengcol 76” made me nostalgic. It reminded me of those days when the very mention of REC (Regional Engineering College) would make my heart miss a beat. It reminded me of the roads that would take you to the campus of the trees that would surround the vicinity, the fragrance that the air circulated that gave you a different vibration. It was where my first love had taken birth. In one of my scrap-notes I had scribbled as a small girl that read “How will it be if I ever marry this boy – Munna ?”

Twenty years after marriage to the same person has not answered my question. I still feel we are at the threshold of some domain which is yet to be discovered.

My memory brightens up with the thought of those loving eyes, those longing stares, the feeling of ecstasy when eyes met and concerned questions. There is a feeling of reward upon introspection. It gives some kind of an inner strength to move on to achieve something in life. May be all these go to say that perhaps God take care to see hearts meet for fulfillment and make living more worthwhile

Priorities have changed; a different wind blows, expectations are new. Passing of time has become predominant. Each one of us is trying to meet deadlines at work places. There is no more of those exchanging notes stretching to long hours

But reading together from a torn slip that remained years with you, looking romantically at an old photograph which was shot unaware listening to an old song together, correcting how much salt to be added to a dish still gives immense pleasure. Love does not change, it brings in new colors.

Relationship is all that matters in a world that is dynamic. A tear creeps up with in the eye. Is it of joy or of remembrance or the lust for the bygone moment?

Even now when I visit Rourkela which happens to be the place where I was born and raised, I steal a chance to go to the REC campus. May be just to wander in those empty corridors or stare at the buildings which stand as a silent testimony to the feeling that had crystallized there. The roads remind me that they had paved sentimental connections and the gates that had opened memorable vistas in life.

Do my eyes long to get a glance of that same face which had charmed me, or do I try to listen to the same song that the birds used to sing to me those days or wait for the same message that the wind would bring with it or do I still wait for my heart to miss a beat the way it had years ago? Am I living in the past or are the sweet remainders, the re-connectors to the essence of life.
 

Sunanda
W/o Bisweswar (Munna) Patra
DGM (Planning), BEML, Mysore
[email protected]

P.S. you can try and guess Munna Patra in the photograph in the "Gulli Centre" Page

Uploaded on 14 Aug. 2002 as Received by E mail at [email protected]
from B.S. Patnaik at Bangalore [email protected]