Lost of Solitaires in the Brook
Some friendships are diamonds. Some are rivers. And some are both beautiful, then gone.
The World Inside the School Gate
There is a world that exists only inside the school gate. A world where the biggest problems are forgotten homework and missed lunches. Where the hallway between two classrooms feels like a whole journey. Where laughter is the loudest thing, and the future is nothing more than tomorrow’s test.
Inside that world, I had my people. My solitaires. You know what a solitaire is, right? It is a single gemstone cut perfectly, placed alone, valued above everything else. That is exactly what my friends were to me. Not a crowd. Not noise. Each one of them was a single, shining gem that made my days feel precious.
We did everything together. We copied each other’s notes. We saved seats in the canteen. We walked to the bus stop debating whose answer was right in the last exam. We shared tiffin boxes and secrets in equal measure. Those friendships were not built on anything complicated. They were just built on time time spent together, every single day, without thinking twice
The Farewell That Changed Everything
I remember standing there on farewell day, looking around at all these familiar faces faces I had seen every morning for years and thinking, these are my people. These are my forever people. Life would carry us together, surely. How could it not?
I was young. I was hopeful. And I was, as I would soon learn, beautifully wrong.
Empty School Corridors
Solitaires Beneath Flowing Light
Because the truth that nobody tells you when you are fifteen or sixteen years old is this: some friends are friends only till the school gate. Some are friends only till the classroom door. Not because anyone was cruel. Not because the love was not real. But because without the school walls holding us together each day, without the same canteen and the same corridor and the same teacher calling our names we simply had no map to find each other anymore.
Some friendships are not meant to travel with you. They are meant to live, fully and beautifully, exactly where they were born.
Friends Like Gems Rare and Real
Here is what I want you to understand. When I say they were solitaires, I mean it in the truest sense. A solitaire is valuable not because it lasts forever in your hand, but because of what it is pure, clear, formed under pressure, impossible to replicate. My school friends were exactly that.
There was the friend who always made me laugh even during the worst exam stress. The one who somehow always had a pen when I forgot mine. The one who walked home the same direction just to talk a little longer. The one who remembered my birthday every single year without being reminded. Each of them a different cut, a different shine, a different kind of beautiful.
They were not perfect people. None of us were. We argued over silly things. We had misunderstandings that felt like the end of the world at the time. But we always came back to each other, because the next day we were sitting in the same row again, and that proximity healed everything.
The Brook That Carried Them Away
After school ended, life became a brook. And a brook does not ask permission. It just flows. It picks up everything in its path and carries it forward new colleges, new cities, new routines, new people. And slowly, without any dramatic moment, without any fight or goodbye, my solitaires began to drift away.
First the messages became shorter. Then the calls became less frequent. Then the birthdays passed with just a quick text or nothing at all. The WhatsApp group that was once alive with memes and voice notes became quiet. And one day I realised I could not even remember the last real conversation I had with some of them.
That realisation stings. Let me not pretend it does not. There is a particular kind of sadness in losing people not to any single event but to ordinary, unhurried time. No drama, no falling out just the slow, quiet drift of a brook.
I used to watch that brook in my mind and feel only loss. But somewhere along the way, I began to see it differently. The brook was not taking them away to punish me. The brook was simply being what it is honest, moving, unstoppable. And the gems were simply doing what gems do in water catching the light for a moment, shimmering beautifully, and then settling somewhere new.
What I Chose to Keep and Let Go
Here is something I figured out at a young age that many people take years to understand: I do not want to trouble myself carrying people who have already left. Not because I am cold. But because I respect both them and myself too much to turn beautiful memories into painful obligations.
The friendships we had were real. They happened. No passing of time can take that away. The laughter in the corridors was real. The shared panic before the board exams was real. The feeling of belonging that warm, quiet certainty that you have people who see you that was very, very real.
But real things can also be complete. A song does not need to play forever to have been beautiful. A sunset does not stay in the sky to prove it was worth watching. And a friendship that bloomed in the school years does not need to follow you into adulthood to have been the most genuine thing you ever felt.
So I let my solitaires go into the brook. Not with bitterness. Not with the desperate clutching of someone who cannot move on. But with the gentle, open hands of someone who knows these were gifts. I was lucky to hold them, even for a while.
The Quiet Gratitude That Stays
If I close my eyes and go back to those school years, I do not feel sadness first. I feel warmth. I feel the sun on the school compound. I feel the noise of a hundred conversations happening at once. I feel the particular joy of someone saving you a seat without being asked.
Those years shaped the kind of person I became. The kindness I learned from one friend, the courage I learned from another, the humour I borrowed from a third I carry all of it. The solitaires may have floated away, but the light they left behind is still here, somewhere deep in me.
I am grateful for each of them. The friend who stayed close. The one who drifted gently. The one who vanished completely. All of them were exactly what they needed to be, for exactly as long as they needed to be it.
That is the thing about solitaires even after they leave your hand, they do not stop being diamonds.
To every friend I found and lost between those school walls — thank you.
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One Comment
Hima
Brought back so many memories ❤️🩹and the way you expressed those feelings through your writing is amazing💌