i am happy

it is thirty minutes past midnight,i stand on my balcony..the street in front of me is bathed in an eerie saffron light,the night is chilly. wrapping my shawl tighter around me i rest my elbows on the railing and philosophically survey the streetdogs coiled up,sound asleep...kaleidoscopic images flash through my brain,all of a sudden there is an aching void in the pit of my stomach and a huge lump in my throat,i ask myself "hey what's this?"..having had no prior experience,it is sometime before i realise with a jolt it is nostalgia i am stricken with. i was 13 years old when i suddenly discovered that this world is a wonderful place to live in.the boundaries of my world coincided with those of my school and considering the fact that my school had always been (in)famous for its notorious lack of space,it is indeed a wonder that i never felt claustrophobic!i could keep count of the number of times i was absent from school during those 5 yrs(viii to xii)on one hand...school was a constant source of entertainment,school was a place where i learnt everything i know today(not lessons,the stuff which matters you now)...i learnt paradoxical lessons in deceit and honesty,chivalry and cowardice,how to get into scrapes and how to extricate ourselves by lying ourselves black in the faces,first crush,first heartbreak,first drunken party during the digha trip...man i could write a book on this and give the goddamn "war and peace" a run for its money....in short school was the only thing "worth living for,worth dying for,worth fighting for"(especially the last,the brawls inevitably ended with poor -undernourished -but-lionhearted -me being beaten black and blue!) and then,just when i thought we'd started rolling,it was packup time. no,i don't want to "go back",that never works ,right?i am happy,wherever i am...but when i walk down that familiar stretch from anandamela to phaari(ahhh!phaari ,even the phuchkawala knew us by names) i feel like just walking those few steps and rushing to school,i restrain myself,i know i'd just end up feeling sad and confused,though i hate admitting it even to myself,i know i don't belong there anymore..actually i don't belong anywhere..except perhaps in my gang ,people i've grown up with,people,who(i know for a fact)are similarly plagued on sleepless wintry nights by happy memories which leave them inexplicably sad......they are the people with whom i am at home,in the truest sense,god bless those bastards ,i love every one of them!sure i am happy today,at least i have them,most of my college friends have no one to fall back on you know,and i have sense enough to realize that nothing,but nothing,lasts forever,and that's the way it should be.but last saturday when we did go to school to collect passes for our reunion and we ended up spending two breathless hours playing hide n seek and kumirdanga in the empty courtyard like we used to, during countless tiffin breaks...i felt kind of silly but also in my heart of hearts i knew that i'll never ,ever in my life,be as deliriously,blindly,insanely happy as i was back then...no substance in this world can give me that kind of a high again i was kind of apprehensive about my own emotions regarding the reunion next week,now i couldn't careless,i already had my reunion! it's past one'o'clock...i might as well try and get some sleep...