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30 September 2026
Time takes many things from us.
People move away. Houses are sold. Children grow up. Friends become names we see occasionally on a screen. Places that once felt permanent quietly change.
Yet some things remain.
A voice we can still hear in our memory.
A particular way someone laughed.
The smell of a kitchen from our childhood.
A lesson given to us by somebody who probably never realised how much it stayed with us.
As the years pass, these small things seem to become more valuable.
Not possessions. Not achievements.
The little things that entered our lives without making much noise.
William Shakespeare wrote in The Tempest, “We are such stuff as dreams are made on.”
I have often thought that memories are a part of that stuff too. They may not be something we can touch, but they quietly become part of who we are.
Perhaps that is why an old photograph can affect us more deeply than an expensive object. The photograph shows us a face, but what we really see is a whole period of our life standing behind it.
We cannot stop time.
We cannot keep everything.
But perhaps we do not lose everything either.
Some people, some moments and some kindnesses become part of us so quietly that even time cannot take them away.
Rajat Chandra Sarmah, Guwahati, Assam, India, Instagram @rajatchandrasarmah, YouTube: conversewithasmile, email rajatchandrasarmah@gmail.com
