The Weight of a Schoolbag

I found a stray marble under my sofa this morning while looking for a lost earring. It was blue, swirled with white, and felt surprisingly heavy in my palm. Holding it, I was suddenly seven years old again, walking home from school with my shoes caked in mud and my backpack feeling like it was filled with bricks. Back then, the walk home was the only time of day that truly belonged to us. There were no lessons to memorize and no expectations to meet. We were just moving through the world, inventing games out of pebbles and shadows, our laughter echoing against the quiet afternoon air. We didn’t know then that those were the golden hours of our lives. We were just trying to get home before the streetlights flickered on. Now, I look at my calendar and wonder when the simple act of walking from one place to another became so complicated. Why do we spend so much of our adulthood trying to get back to that feeling of having nowhere to be but the road ahead?

Kamalesh Das has captured this exact feeling in his beautiful image titled Masti Ki Pathshala. It reminds me that joy is often found in the simplest of journeys. Does this scene bring back any specific memories of your own childhood?