Back to School: Where Memories Stayed but Everything Else Changed

Back to School: Where Memories Stayed but Everything Else Changed

I never believed in ghosts — until I became one in my own memories.

It was a rainy afternoon when I found myself standing at the old iron gate of my childhood school. I hadn’t planned this visit. A detour during a business trip had somehow led me here — to this road, this corner, this place that once meant the world to me.

The gate still squeaked.

I pushed it gently, and it moaned like an old friend waking up after a long nap. The same trees lined the path, but they seemed taller, older, heavier with silence. I half expected to see my 10-year-old self running across the yard with ink-stained fingers and untied shoelaces.

But the field was empty.

The old basketball court, where we once laughed and fought and bled, had been replaced by a parking lot. The canteen — oh, that sacred hut of samosas and mango drinks — was now a metal vending machine box. I stared at it for a long moment, feeling betrayed by time.

I walked past classrooms whose windows now had grills. Back in my day, those windows let in not just air but also whispers, paper planes, and sometimes a rogue cricket ball. The smell of chalk was gone. The sound of wooden desks scratching against concrete was no longer there. Even the colors on the wall — once bright with murals we painted — had faded into bland institutional grey.

I reached Class 5-B.

That was my room. The place where I first stood up to answer a question. Where I learned to lie about homework. Where I passed my first note to a girl whose name I never had the courage to ask again. The door was shut. I peeked through the glass.

Inside, it was just another room. Smartboards instead of blackboards. Plastic chairs instead of wooden benches. No names carved into desks. No memories in the corners.

No ghosts — except me.

I walked to the playground, now littered with electronic slides and foam flooring. Once, we had a broken swing, a rusty see-saw, and a patch of dirt that served every purpose from cricket pitch to war zone. I remembered falling there once — scraped knees, tears, and a teacher who brought me water from her own bottle.

I wondered where she was now.

Had she grown old, retired, forgotten us? Or did she still remember the boy who couldn’t tie his laces but always raised his hand?

Suddenly, I heard laughter.

A group of children ran past me — maybe ten or eleven years old. Their uniforms were newer, their shoes shinier, their laughter still familiar. For a moment, I wanted to stop them. Ask: Do you know what happened here?
Do you know about Anwar who once climbed that tree during math class? Or Zain who got locked in the science cupboard? Or Sana who cried every Monday?

But they wouldn’t know. How could they?

They belonged to a new chapter.

I was just a footnote.

I sat on a bench — the only one that hadn’t changed — and took out my phone to click a picture. But the image looked too sterile, too modern. I put the phone away. Some moments aren’t meant to be captured. Only remembered.

I left the school with a heavy heart.

Not because it had changed.

But because I had hoped it hadn’t.

And perhaps, deep down, I feared that even if I returned a hundred times, I’d never find the pieces of me I left behind.

The bell rang as I reached the gate — sharp, digital, and soulless.

Not like the old one, which echoed across the valley and stayed in your head long after school was over.

I didn’t turn back.

I didn’t want the school to see me cry