We visited Onkar’s university campus today. Mom and I had visited once already on this trip, but it was late in the evening when it was dark and we didn’t get to properly see much except the cafeteria (where Mom infamously struggled with chopsticks and noodles, after which Onkar firmly — but jokingly? I’m actually not sure — told us never to return).
But today, we went in the morning, in full daylight and deeper into autumn. The ginkgo trees that lined the footpath had turned a beautiful golden-orange, and we walked beneath their canopy in awe.
Onkar took us to see the tennis court where Light and L had their tennis match in Death Note. We even made our way to Onkar’s old student accommodation, and while Google Maps got us close, it wasn’t until we passed the exact entrance that recognition hit us, even though I probably wouldn’t have been able to pull it out just from memory.
In fact, I suddenly remembered things from the 2017 trip that I didn’t even know I still had memories of, like when he was just moving into those dorms and we helped him carry his stuff in.
Mom’s face lit up — she stood there like she had over 7 years ago, imagining how Onkar used to walk from here to the campus buildings we’d just seen every day for classes.
You can never know exactly how that experience unfolded for that person there in the past, but sometimes, being there lets you imagine it.
I think you can have similar experiences about your own past self to some extent too. I did, albeit to a lesser extent, during the times I went back to university for final exams after I’d moved to London in my 3rd year. I felt it when I went back for graduation too.
I saw Onkar feeling the same way today.
He asked a couple of girls who’d just had him take their photo if they studied his program, and told them he was an alumnus. I guess he was looking for some familiarity too. I can imagine how nostalgic he was feeling, coming back to his university for the first time in two years since he left the country, 3 years after graduating. Just seeking a moment of familiarity.
Then, later at night, conversation somehow turned into dad narrating a story of how he’d had a big health scare in the early years when we’d moved to the UK. It was back in 2005, when I must’ve been three, Onkar five.
Dad had found a lump near his shoulder. Getting tests through the NHS took forever — even though he worked as a doctor within the system — and they came back inconclusive. A fellow doctor that was responsible for his case told him gently that if he were in Dad’s place, he’d spend time with his family. I don’t know how much he said, but cancer was on the table and dad, being in the field himself, must’ve suspected it too.
He didn’t feel sick, but he was signed off work for two weeks. The weight of uncertainty hung over everything.
Mom and Dad now told us how terrified they’d been. I, of course, was toddling around completely oblivious at the time. I have a faint memory of having heard the story before but most of it was news to me. I didn’t remember anything from the actual time.
I later asked Onkar if he remembered any of it, having been a little older. He said yes. He associated that time with when I bloodied my face falling down the stairs (which I vaguely recall too — maybe my earliest memory — running into the kitchen crying, blood everywhere, front teeth missing). I now learned that he’s pretty sure he was the one who convinced me to climb the stairs in the first place. That whole period had been etched into his memory as a kind of chaotic blur.
I discovered a new perspective — a 5 year old’s. I don’t know how much Onkar would’ve known about the severity of dad’s health at the time, but it must’ve been a trying time (to say the least) for the lot of them.
It was strange, hearing Dad speak about it now — with humour, even. He told us how the young anaesthetist who prepped him for surgery had written nothing in the ‘complications’ section of his waiver form, and how he had to list the risks for her before signing it.
Eventually, they removed the lump. It wasn’t cancer. It was some sort of tuberculosis-related infection — serious, but beatable. His immune system fought it off.
Still, they didn’t know how it would turn out for months. That period of anticipation must’ve been excruciating.
Bua chimed in about how she was undergoing a heart surgery of her own at the same time, and so neither she nor dad had been able to fly out and visit the other at the time.
And yet, none of it made it into my life, really. I didn’t remember anything. I had no idea until now.
The day had started light — Onkar joking about how he and his uni friends had come up with the ‘correct’ pronunciation for モスバーガー in first year, insisting it’s Moss burger, not Mo’s burger, like we’d been calling it. The real pronunciation is anyone’s guess — it’s a matter of perspective. But I understood that Onkar wanted to cling to the one that he made memories around in a different era of his life.
By the end of the day, I was thinking about how even the people you think you know best are unknowable in some ways. You learn about them in stories they tell ten years later, or in moments they recall by accident. Even your own childhood looks different when you hear it through someone else’s memory.
And that’s always going to be the case. You think you know your family so well — they’re the people closest to you, after all — but there are and will always be entire chapters of their lives you’ve never even skimmed.
And sometimes all it takes is a walk through an old campus or a story over dinner to remind you that there’s always more than meets the eye.