Abosheshey or At the End of it All

You could never know what kind of art or medium would get you going, in a myriad of emotions; you just lose yourself in deep thought and are inspired to let things out.




One such experience happened to me right now. I've been off my writing for about what, three to four months? It just took this one Bengali movie to put everything in place and get the juices flowing. And yes, this movie has the same title as this post. No, I' not going to talk about the movie, though. If possible, do watch it. It has the portrayal of poetry and emotions you don't generally see in today's movies. It is way, way far from being cliche.


Anyway, what this is about might bore many of you since you won't be experiencing what I'm feeling right now. Inspired by the film, and a specific aspect I took out of it, is how we build relationships with the few people we go out of our comfort zones to gel with.


At the end of it all, one person isn't remembered the same way by everyone, except if he/she is God. What I mean is, a person will be moulded in a particular, rather different way in each association's mind.


Let us take the number of people who you can be yourself with. Believe me, you're lucky if you can count them on both hands. I'll go out of my way and say that these are the lives you touch, during life, no matter the period, from your childhood until you need help just remembering the name of the person sitting in front of you.


There's the You who is the apple of your family's eyes. No matter what you do, they are almost always never ready to give up on you. These are the people you should never distance yourself from. To quote a TV personality, "They've got your back, Jack."


Another one of You is the soulmate/girlfriend/boyfriend/friend-with-benefits/love-of-your-life (all these names have come up over time, don't really know what it actually is). Whatever you call it, this is the person whom you miss the most when he/she is not there. Lacking much experience in this particular field, all that I state here is hearsay. I tend to believe that this is the person who accepts you with all your flaws, ignores all your chides and wants to be with you in spite of that. Again, hearsay. The identity for this person might change, but the way you are with him/her doesn't. Hearsay, hearsay everywhere.


Then there's the You who REALLY knows a few people very closely. People call them best friends. I prefer to avoid the term because you never know when you are going to part and the identity changes with different phases of your life. But the strings weaved during the glory days will remain until you're buried under the ground or burning above it. This is where you first learn to care about, outside your immediate family. For someone, you are the person without whom, he/she can't open a pint. For another, you are the person who forces him/her to accompany you to have cheesecakes.  There's the one whose face lights up when he/she sings a favourite song with you. For yet another, you are the one who makes shopping for groceries fun. Whatever the reason or the activity you have fun at, these are the people who will never have bad blood for you. You meet after twenty years and they'll be ready with a string of expletives to shower on you, for being late. And the weird thing is, you miss this.


Then there is the You with whom people share their chit-chat. Your acquaintances. Your colleagues beside whom you pull up a chair to strike up a conversation, your college-mates or class-mates with whom you share your escapade of the previous night, that boy/girl who has a thing for you which you don't know of, your hairdresser with whom you share the recent successes of the club you support or how the weather is so harsh nowadays. All these people might not be very close to you, but you form a connection that just might endure the test of time.


Whatever the reason people might remember you for, be it the conversations, activities, photographs, poems, music, dancing, or that average blog with a good article once in a while, you can be sure that you're creating an impression on a mind which comes across hundreds of people in its lifetime. Be humble and grateful for being honored with such a distinction. I'll generalize what they say: its better to have had and lost than to have never had it at all.


People may not live on, but memories do. I think, at the end of it all, you'll be visiting each strand in this web of memories and smile to yourself, fondly thinking of these memories and the people who helped create them.