No matter how tightly we grasp, time somehow always slips from our fingers like sand too fine to handle. It carries us swiftly, hurrying us along through words, through days, through moments that should have lasted longer. There will always be more time, we convince ourselves—more days to spend with the ones we love, more laughter-filled moments, more quiet afternoons to simply be. Time, though, waits for no one. Nostalgia, neither does it slow down. So could this have been said of such corridors that once resounded with hasty conversations between classes, hurried footsteps, and laughter.

Regarding how time never seemed to pass quickly enough within such classrooms where half-whispered jokes turned into communal memories—now, though, when it seems like it’s passing too quickly.

The same could be said of these corridors once filled with laughter, hasty steps, and hurried words in between classes. Regarding the classrooms where hushed jokes became inside stories, where time always used to pass too slowly—except now, when it seems like it’s slipping too quickly away.

It’s funny, really. how we wait years for the next phase, only to find, too late, that we were having the good times all along. That the rushed conversations, the eleventh-hour submissions, the shared moments of laughter between classes—these were the things that made this place home. And the worst part is realizing that once we leave for the final time, we can never come back in the same way.

Perhaps as a writer, as a businessman or as a ceo but never ever as a student, who has once stepped into this place unaware of what’s going to happen to him, with just an empty mind resonating with the voice “baas 2 saal aur”.

But now, those two years are through. That countdown that seemed like forever finally expired, and there’s no going back. The bell will ring once more, not as a reminder to hurry to the next period, but as a soft goodbye to an act that can never be changed. The type we always knew we were getting but never really prepared for.

And yet, after all this time, after all those all-nighters and exam panics, there’s still no sign of that academic comeback. Maybe it never arrives, or maybe, just maybe, it was never really about the grades or the lectures. Maybe what truly stays with us is everything in between—the bonds, the laughter, the moments that made this place more than just a college.

Time had seemed to stretch on forever for years. It was counted in terms, in future exams, in the reassuring hope that there was always tomorrow—another visit to the canteen, another late night handing in an assignment, another stroll through these corridors that seemed would forever be our own. But time is a deceiver. It proceeds without leave, without second thoughts, and before we realize it, the days we believed were ordinary have become memories we would sacrifice everything to experience again.

And now, here we are, standing at the edge of a goodbye that came too soon.The same corridors that used to ring out with laughter, the classrooms that saw both our boredom and our ambitions, the canteen that overheard the juiciest gossips, silliest jokes and plans for the future—nothing is different. And yet, all is different. Because the ones who made this space home are about to disperse, each pursuing a fate that seemed so far off before.

It’s funny, actually. How we wasted so much time hoping for what’s to come, never knowing that we were living now the moments we would eventually miss. The hasty talks, the anxious smiles as we sat down to an exam, the jokes that only made sense here within these walls—these were more than fleeting seconds.

We will soon exit these gates, no longer students, but something different. The world will give us new labels—engineer, doctor, writer, entrepreneur—but never will we be again the students who entered with uncertain hearts and big dreams they were afraid to speak aloud. Those versions of us, the ones who occupied these classrooms, who sprinted down these corridors, who laughed too hard at things only we got, will be left behind, suspended in time, waiting for us to come back—not as we were, but as people who remember. 

And maybe, just maybe, one day you’ll walk these hallways again, and for a brief moment, it will feel like you never left.

By Tanzeel Shahid
Writer (Team 2024-25)