Notes on friendship

Once upon a time, in the distant past I did have some friends and when I look back on those times I can’t really reconcile my current situation with the time I had all those years ago. It was the childhood in its elemental form. There were cricket matches with me umpiring on wheelchair! There were petty squabbles and then making up, some sharing of secrets and being perpetually short on money but not minding it too much and looking forward to another day. There were three brothers with whom I was especially close with and whatever those four years were, there was never a dull moment. And then the march of time and tide took them away from my orbit and I also moved away and found my own orbit to navigate without the attendant stars.

And just imagine my surprise when I found them on facebook after so many years. When you think about it, it’s like strapping yourself to a time machine and zooming 23 years forward. You have been thrust into this unfamiliar terrain of familiarity. What do you do, how do you react? I mean, is it possible to be completely cut off from some people for well over two decades and one fine day connecting with them just like that without undergoing the kind of emotion where you come face to face with your own future or what might have been a close approximation in somebody else’ projection. Seeing all those photographs of them with their wives and kids makes you think gosh! This is what happens with ordinary people. You think that in the cosmic order of things, so many pieces would have fallen into places. That same anxiety about making the right career choices, picking the right engineering or business institute. Would they have fought for their right to choose their life partners or would have accepted the bloody compromise. I am assailed by questions like these even as I was preoccupied with the business of surviving from one day to another. The glimpse of the future through the prism of the past.   google.co.in