Book of I

The last light of the day bled out of the sky, Sajit and Guna leaned against the ruins of a forgotten civilization they had once seen rise and fall. To the ordinary eye, they would appear as two simple archaeologists on an excavation mission but beneath the surface of their weathered skin, thousands of years of life weighed down on them, immortal souls they were, tied to the land they wandered.

Guna pulled out a small leather book from his bag. He had countless journals over the centuries, documenting everything from lost dynasties to history to his fleeting romances and friendships, some names recorded with fondness, others with indifference.

“Not love” he replied. “These pages are full of memories, triumphs, grief; because someday I want to look back and understand who I was.”

Sajit let out a sigh. “What is the point of understanding yourself when you are in the cycle of doomed change over and over again? We brother are drifters in a world that finds us obsolete and moves forward without us.”

“You don’t feel the weight of the memory of everyone who loved you, who you loved and left behind?” Guna asked, closing the journal and looking at his friend, his gaze penetrating. “I still feel them with me.”

Sajit shook his head, looking out across the desert where only silence met his words. “I remember my first wife’s name, her smile, the vein on her forehead as she laughed, the mole on her nose. The way she would occupy the entire mattress. She was real. The others… I tried to love them, love becomes thin and hollow when you realize how temporary everything is.”

Guna raised an eyebrow. “Temporary? Sajit! We are the temporary ones. Flashes in the lives of others. We may live forever but in the end, we are as much a passing cloud in their skies as they are to us”

“This would be easier if we had perished along with them. Memories that actually meant something instead of this eternity curse and doomed to forget. My memories feels like sand slipping through my fingers no matter how hard I try to hold on.”

Guna looked up at the starlit sky “Sands of time wait for none, but all we have is time”

“I have stopped holding onto people, I cannot bear to lose anyone else.” Sajit said after a pause.

“Maybe that is the difference between us” Guna said. “You fear losing, I fear forgetting. That is why I keep a record, of every person I meet, of every place I go. I always carry them with me, even if it means carrying the sorrow.”

Sajit felt a flicker of curiosity, “Do you ever regret it?” he asked hesitantly.

“Regret?” Guna said “This curse has taught me that even a thousand lifetimes would be too short to learn everything. Our lives have been long and painful but also miraculous. Maybe it was never a curse in the first place.”

Perhaps, Sajit thought, he had been wrong. He had spent too long running from memories instead of embracing them, fearing that they would add to his loneliness.

Maybe be he would begin his own journal too.