Do you remember me, too?

Musical Mood: Yun Hi Chala - Swades.

Six years ago, when I was on holiday with my parents in Egypt, we used to walk past this young girl selling papyrus artwork on the street every day, as she was next to the hotel we were in. She must have seen the belt I was wearing (which was nothing fancy) one day, as the next day, she asked me if I would give her the belt as a gift to her. The following day, I remembered my belt and gave it to her, and in return, she gave me one of the papyrus paintings for free, which I now proudly display on my bedroom wall. I sometimes wonder if she is still selling them from the same place, or whether she has moved on. I wonder if she still has the belt I gave her.

Or there was one time on the Europe Trip, in Czechoslovakia, when our car crashed into the barrier at the edge of the road when we were going down a curved road. While we were waiting for the police to arrive, I looked across the road and saw a row of three or four white terraced houses. In front of one of the houses was a postman delivering letters to the house, and I saw a girl of about eighteen (I guess?) and a younger girl of about eleven (guessing again…) by the front door. The elder girl must have been saying something teasingly to the postman, because the next thing I saw, he was going after her as she was running away from him. The younger girl seemed amused by all this. I still remember thinking something like, “They are in love.” (Haha… don’t ask!) It was such a simple, innocent little scene, and I remember watching quietly from the other side of the road (I doubt they noticed me), entranced. I wonder if they ever got married, or whether something has happened to them.

Then there was this French middle-aged couple we met at a restaurant in Italy, who just started talking to us. We had fun that evening. I took a photo of my parents and the couple, which we still have on one of the computers. They seemed like a sweet couple. I sometimes wonder where they are now, whether they’ve retired or not. And there was this guy (old or young, I genuinely cannot remember) at a bowling arcade whom we were standing behind in a queue (I was around eight years old then), who won a Dalmatian soft toy from those robotic-claw-game-things, and gave it to me. Looking back on it now, I realise what a sweet gesture it was, but I guess I was too young to understand, then. I wonder who he was (he left the place after that, I think), whether he still remembers giving this soft toy to a little girl behind him in the queue. Then there was the Hot French Guy I once met at a barbeque, who is now back in France. I wonder if he ever realises I still think about his gorgeous blue eyes smiling shyly at me as I tried to put together a comprehensible French sentence.

And then there was this friendly African American (?) lady I met in a supermarket in California, who thought my British accent was "cute" (...sigh!). And this Telugu guy I got talking to in an aeroplane, whom I was jealous of because he got to travel to Japan for his work. I wonder where they are now, what has happened to these lives...
If you look at a person’s life as a little path that they are building for themselves as they go, using whatever materials they come across (and possibly choose) during their journey through life, you will in most cases – if not all - find the most random of bits and pieces littered occasionally across this path. They are very tiny (i.e. directly proportionate to how much of the person’s life at that time was taken up by these random bits and pieces), and they do not by any means play a significant role (or possibly a role at all) in altering the meanderings of the path, but they are what makes the path as it is. They are the smallest, most random of events that have played a role – however small – in the play of the person’s life. And what makes them different, and possibly stand out, from the rest of the path is that they are only ever there once every so often. If these pieces pretty much formed the person’s path, it would no longer be random, would it?

We are always making new acquaintances as we live our lives, of course, and I understand that each acquaintance is different from the other for a multitude of reasons (which I will not go into, lest I wander off-topic…), but it is sometimes possible to see similarities in the type of acquaintances we make. One such example is the ‘random bits and pieces’. It is these ‘random bits and pieces’ I see in my (imaginary) path, when I think about some of the people I have come across in my life so far – the ones I have met, when I least expect to make an acquaintance, whom I know I will ‘never’ (considering the random nature of these acquaintances, I guess it is safe to say never) be seeing again, but whose company I enjoyed, anyway. I think the beautiful thing about these people you come across so randomly, is that it is a one-off. You never pine for anything more than that one meeting, because sometimes it is nice – refreshing, even – to just meet someone randomly and let go of them as easily as you held on to them in the first place, taking back with you just the memories, that give you everything you ever wanted from that acquaintance.

And there is a pleasant feeling in one’s mind, when one (rather whimsically) walks down the path behind them, and thinks about each of the little random bits and pieces that they once held and placed in the path of their lives.

I find myself doing that. I find myself thinking about these random strangers that have touched me – each in their own way – and wondering what they are up to now. I know I will never know for certain, but that’s OK. There seems (to me, anyway…!) to be something… magical, surreal… about knowing that there is a girl somewhere, thinking about the people that are miles away from her, remembering them still, despite the weeks, months and years separating their acquaintance and her thoughts. I sometimes wonder if they do that, too. Maybe not all of them, and most definitely not all of the time, but still... I sometimes wonder if they ever think about the little Indian girl with a hearing aid whom they once met. If I think about such things occasionally, then surely other people do so too?

PS: All the memories are… well, from memory. Therefore the details may be incorrect, but they are as I remember them.