End of An Era

It's the monsoons again. My third one here. The strange thing with every passing year is that, as we grow up, time seems to rush past us. Remember the year 1998? I don't. Not most of it. Just one thing stands out more than the others; waiting for it to get over. The whole year. Why? Because 1999 was such a cool number. The year 1999 was spent anticipating the change which happened once in thousand years. That's something that 30 generations of people before and after me would not be able to do; to change the first number in the four-digit year. Wating to traverse those tweleve months seemed like the slowest journey one could make. What about the other things done in that year? Memory, like a photo album, captures moments with its tales wrapped underneath. I could recover a special moment from that age if I really tried. But those which stand untarnished and at the top of my mind are those from the recent past. For the want of a better bracketing, let me say, the past two years.
There are two kinds of memory. Not in the physio-psychological manner but in the everyday sense of things. Memories we long for and memories we wish to avoid. Most times, our minds make one of the other; through a process of selection. That is why we should be wary of thinking that everything from the good times was great and everything that sucked was horrible. We select our memories. We choose a few and reject the others; to make our versions of ourselves consistent. That is how much we love ourselves.
Masters' in English is done and how much have I learnt and how much have I given back to the world? Questions I cannot answer. The direction in which I am set to travel becomes clearer. Things change and they remain the same. One can only keep walking. I think I have and I will. But when I look out the window and see the freshly drenched leaves showing multiple shades of green thanks to the muted light from the sun; I realize that it has all truly rolled to a stop. Two July 1sts ago, I stepped into the Department of English, Jadavpur University as a fresher. Two years have passed exactly and now, I am back where it all started; a professional/academic ground-zero. The possibilities are endless. Now, the next step beckons.