Down The Memory Lane

The journey back home had been a real adventure, now that Nik thought about it. On the way back he even had to sneak into a different train when he heard an announcement saying the train he had boarded was to be delayed for at least two hours at an intermediary junction. Fortunately no one cared because it had been the last one hour of the journey.

Anyway, he was welcomed at the station by his brother in the family’s sedan. Mak, his brother had come home a few days earlier from his own university in a different city. The ride back home was pretty uneventful and the minute he reached home, his mother Molly started coddling him, which went on for a few days as the boys had been gone from home for a while. Molly even wanted to plan a family vacation but sadly their father couldn’t get leave from work so they just decided to have dinner at the Winter Jewel, on Nik’s suggestion for which his father Mark was very grateful as he thought it would be quite instrumental in soothing his disgruntled wife. 'A few more trips to the local park and the market and she’s gonna forget all about the family vacation thingy', his father thought, laughing to himself.

In the following days to got in touch with Avan and started playing online with him in new MMORPG that had just been released a few days back. Avan’s family was not too well off so he was confined to the home eternally together with his sister Julie. He was so bored that he even admitted playing an insidious prank on his sister and her friends whom she had invited over. Nik tried asking what it was and how it went, but Avan avoided it by saying that it was not for the faint of heart and that it was a discussion for a later time, but Nik couldn’t help but notice the tinge of fear and embarrassment in his voice over the phone and couldn’t help but guess that it had not gone as well as the bloke would’ve wanted it to.

In the days to come, Nik got in touch with some of his old friends from his schooling days. And three of them along with Nik and his brother decided to visit an abandoned beach as Alnerwick was a coastal town and to Nik there was no greater paradise than an abandoned beach in the middle of nowhere. One of his friends, Gunther was studying in the same university as Nik, but as his junior as something unfortunate happened and he had to retake his university entrance exam after a year. He was a short guy by general standards with dense black crew cut hair and had been so since the first time Nik had met him in school. The two had shared a healthy rivalry over their scores which had grown into friendship over the years. He could still remember the guy flashing his report card at him in fifth grade with his mother by his side saying he was the op of the class this term, Nik had stood top the following term, and the next term Gander had once again bested him and returned to taunt. Now that he thought about it, it was quite funny how competitive they used to be.

Sanders, his other friend was the school miser along with his best buddy Brad. With his shifty dark eyes and wiry barbed hair, he sure kept up the appearance. His most famous exploit as a miser was to cheat a little girl out of her lollypop on the school grounds. The event had been chronicled and embellished into something almost legendary but this was how it went as Nik had personally witnessed the drama as it took place, those days, everyday the students were required to clean the school grounds out of trash as part of the ‘Clean and Green’ program- wonderful idea put forth by their then principal Sister Shiny. The children loved the exercise too as everyday someone from the group would come upon a lucky coin lost in the sands of the ground which was the size of a football field (of course Nik had found a few cents too). Since everyday the groups rotated their shift, the treasure discovered, in this case one or two cents were normally claimed by the person who had unearthed them. Sr.Shiny would never have thought that this little treasure game would make the groups scour the grounds for treasure and trash alike, like a bunch of crazy monkeys. Anyways, the practice kept the school grounds quite clean.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

It was one of those days when Nik’s class was on the cleaning duty and they were busy picking up trash under the sweltering Sun and In the meantime a little girl who had probably been late to get into her class was returning hastily with a lollypop in her hand after having finished her lunch under one of the shady trees that dotted the margin of the ground. It was at this time that Sanders gave the little girl a bump that looked almost accidental and as a result she dropped her precious lollypop into the sands. As the girl was bending over to pick it up, Sanders gently stopped her and quite generously advised her that it was bad for health to eat things from the ground and instead said that he was going to put it into the trash can. The little girl already late for class and confused, mumbled an apology and ran to her class. Sanders who had been waiting for this with an evil twinkle in his eyes immediately pounced onto the lollypop, washed it under water and put it into his mouth with a satisfied grin and continued working.

This colourful scene was witnessed by quite a few people and his popularity as a miser skyrocketed in the following days, but he didn’t care anyway. In his own words, “I am already a miser, what more can you make me… hahaha a miserly miser?” he used to laugh. But despite all the man’s misgivings he had a good heart and always did right where it really counted, but then again almost all people from small towns are, and Nik knew he had always been misunderstood, he wasn’t a miser but an opportunist and Nik always thought he would achieve something big in life.

His other friend Jay was a thin hardworking guy with a simple and gentle personality. He hadn’t been too close with Nik during his school days but quickly became part of his local gang after their schooling was over. Together they finally decided that they would be going to an abandoned beach the day after tomorrow that Sanders had scouted out and with that they said their goodbyes.

Inside their home Mak was doing his exercises, the guy couldn’t be called a fitness freak but he was pretty close and censored all kinds of food much to the annoyance of their mother and this was a source of constant banter between the two. Meanwhile Nik who liked to take photographs cleaned his camera and lenses, getting ready for the outing the day after tomorrow. After they finished that they quickly ate dinner and went to sleep after a game of carroms with the family.

The next day after Nik was done running a chore for his mother and returning he chanced upon the lane that he remembered had led to the home of his school crush, if you could even call it that because the guy had been clueless about his own feelings if that was even possible and most of the time it was just a very fleeting feeling that he attached absolutely no importance to. Even so he couldn’t help but take a detour to go that way even if he knew she wasn’t here anymore.

“So far, this break had turned out to be a refreshing trek down the memory lane and the making memories part is going to unfold tomorrow”, he sighed in a rare moment of aesthetic peacefulness. {Can even Nik not escape the trappings of the heart ? Let's see what unfolds}

“Well let’s see what tomorrow brings”.