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23 September 2026
Some people remain in our lives long after we have stopped speaking to them.
Not because we deliberately hold on to them. They simply appear now and then.
A song brings back a face. A familiar smell takes us to an old house. We pass a street we have not seen for years and suddenly remember who used to walk beside us there.
It is strange how memory works.
We may forget what someone told us last month, yet remember a sentence spoken twenty years ago. We may forget the details of an entire afternoon but remember the way somebody laughed.
Perhaps people leave us in smaller ways than we realise.
A habit we picked up from them. A phrase we still use. A way of looking at the world. Even a kindness we received and later passed on to someone else without thinking about where it began.
That may be one of the quietest forms of permanence.
We do not always remember people by keeping their photographs.
Sometimes we remember them simply by becoming, in some small way, the person they once helped us to be.
Rajat Chandra Sarmah, Guwahati, Assam, India, Instagram @rajatchandrasarmah5, YouTube: conversewithasmile, email rajatchandrasarmah@gmail.com
