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2 October 2026
Some people remain in our memory for reasons we cannot quite explain.
They may not have been our closest friends. They may have been teachers, neighbours, colleagues, or simply someone we met for a short period of our lives.
Yet years later, something reminds us of them.
Perhaps it is a particular expression they used.
A way they laughed.
The way they listened when everybody else was busy speaking.
I have sometimes wondered why memory chooses certain people and quietly lets others disappear.
Maybe it has little to do with how important they were to the world.
Perhaps it has more to do with how they made us feel when we were around them.
There are people who leave behind achievements.
There are others who leave behind a feeling.
The second kind can be harder to remember clearly, yet strangely harder to forget.
We may not remember exactly what they told us.
We remember that, for some reason, we felt a little better after speaking with them.
That may be one of the quietest ways a person can leave a mark on another life.
No monument.
No photograph.
Just a small place in somebody’s memory.
Rajat Chandra Sarmah, Guwahati, Assam, India, Instagram @rajatchandrasarmah, YouTube: conversewithasmile, email rajatchandrasarmah@gmail.com
