time capsule💊

Durgapur, West Bengal, India 2026 Part of Project Time Capsule by Subhrojit Dey

I grew up returning to this whale in Vasundhara Park, never imagining that one day it would become a monument to my own memories.

As a child, I never questioned why a whale stood in the middle of a park. It was simply part of my world, a place to climb, to play, and to dream. Years later, I returned to find it weathered, overgrown, and quietly disappearing into the landscape.

Looking at it now, I can't help but feel that it has forgotten the sea, just as I have forgotten parts of the child I once was.

Perhaps that's what time does. It doesn't erase our beginnings; it slowly moves them somewhere we can no longer reach. Yet even in decay, places continue to hold the echoes of our laughter, our imagination, and the versions of ourselves that existed there.

Maybe we never truly outgrow childhood. We simply become strangers to the places that remember it better than we do.