Shop that sells memories

I found the shop on a street I had walked past a hundred times.That was the strange part.

It wasn’t hidden behind an alley or covered in vines. It wasn’t surrounded by anything mysterious. It was simply there, squeezed 

between a bakery and an old bookstore, with a tiny wooden sign above the door.MEMORIES — BOUGHT & SOLD.I stood outside for almost a minute, wondering whether it was some kind of joke.

Then I walked in.There were hundreds of glass bottles arranged on wooden shelves. Some were tiny, some enormous. Each had a handwritten label.“First day of school.”“Grandmother’s kitchen.”

“Falling in love at seventeen.”“Summer vacation, 1998.”“Last conversation.”I stared at them.“What exactly do you sell?” I asked the old woman behind the counter.

“Memories,” she said, as if that were obvious.“Whose memories?”She smiled.“Anyone’s.”I laughed nervously.

“Can I buy one?”“Of course.”She picked up a small bottle.“Seven minutes from a stranger’s childhood. ₹300.”

I paid.She uncorked it.For a moment, nothing happened.Then I was standing somewhere I had never been.

A little boy was running through a garden, chasing butterflies. Someone was laughing nearby. There was the smell of wet soil and mangoes. The boy fell, scraped his knee, and immediately started crying.A woman rushed toward him.His mother.She picked him up and kissed his forehead.

And suddenly, I missed her.I didn’t know her.I had never met that woman.Yet I missed her so badly that my chest hurt.The memory disappeared after a few seconds.

I returned the bottle.“I’ll take another.”The shopkeeper looked at me carefully.“Be careful. Other people’s memories can leave behind feelings that don’t belong to you.”

I ignored her.I bought another.Then another.A wedding.A birthday.A train journey.A friendship that ended.

A father teaching his daughter to ride a bicycle.A woman sitting beside her dying husband, holding his hand and pretending she wasn’t afraid.I began returning every evening.

Eventually, I stopped buying happy memories.I wanted sad ones.I wanted to understand why strangers cried.One evening, I noticed a bottle sitting alone on the counter.

There was no label.“How much?”The old woman didn’t answer.“What’s inside?”She looked at m

“Yours.”I laughed.“That isn’t possible.”“It is.”She placed the bottle in front of me.

I picked it up.Inside was a memory from years ago.I was six years old.I was sitting on the floor of my childhood 

bedroom, crying because I thought nobody cared that I had lost my favourite toy.Then someone entered.My mother.She sat beside me, found the toy underneath 

the bed, wiped my tears and hugged me.I had forgotten that moment completely.But she hadn’t.I looked at the shopkeeper.“Why would you sell this?”

“We don’t sell memories,” she said quietly.“We only help people find the ones they accidentally left behind.”I looked around the shop again.Maybe memories weren’t meant to be bought.

Maybe they were meant to be remembered.I left the shop without purchasing anything.The next morning, I walked down the same street.There was a bakery.There was an old bookstore.

But there was no memory shop.Only an empty wall.I stood there for a while.Then I smiled.Somewhere inside me, a forgotten memory had finally come home.