It was Friday finally. It had been a grueling week and the promise that
the weekend was going to be anything but torture made me smile as I left office.
I was to meet Rohit, my long lost best friend from school. Not lost just in the
sense of losing contact but also in the sense of being lost to me. We had split
paths long ago, even before school ended. I have no idea why and what happened
but I know it did. He might say that I didn't participate in the circles that
he did while I could say likewise.
His place is close to where I work now. Just a five minute drive some
would say. I don't! After having moved to Bangalore my sense of distance is measured
more with respect to the time to travel which is again relative to the time of
the day. Call me someone who is from a small town (which Hyderabad is not!) but
traffic in Bangalore baffles me more and more every day. One moment I am stuck
in choking seemingly endless traffic and then I cross a junction and it all clears
up like someone had cleaned up a sink clog!
Lucky for me the weekend traffic had not picked up yet. I made it to
his place in less time than I had anticipated. I met him. It was strange. Not
that we picked up where we had left. As if any one of us knew where we had left
off to pick it up in the first place. His face was a little blotted and he had
a respectable middle aged tummy sticking through his t-shirt. Quite a far cry
from the slim figurine from school but then I wasn't the same either. I was a
little broken physically, grown a little muscular, grown my own little tummy
and was living with a heart that had cracked, partly healed and slashed in a
hundred different places (sometimes by others and mostly by me!)
Strange as it might seem but both were speaking in a tone as if the
distance between us was squishable, the wall between us surmountable. Wasn't
sure. May be the evening had answers hidden in it. He had previously called the
meet off but when he heard that I might have a loaded Sunday, he half agreed to
make it to the meet but said that he would have to leave early and catch up
with his friends at work. Something about it made me raise an eyebrow but then
who was I to judge so I reconciled in the fact that yes, we were meeting. As we
drove along, we made small talk, slightly grazing upon topics we knew not if it
would be sensed as uncomfortable, painful or intrusive.
Finally he confessed. Sandeep was also in town and he didn't know if I
would be uncomfortable with him around so he didn't mention that he was going
to him after meeting me. It has puzzled me for over a decade now. One day there
I was introducing Rohit and Sandeep. The next I was standing on the sidelines
as their friendship grew leaps and bounds. I was not bothered, as anyone who
knows me would have known. I always like it when all my friends meet up,
socialize and get along. All my friends are friends. But it has rarely happened
that I have been left out. Yes the intimacy might have diminished a bit but
never left out. That was just the case with Rohit and Sandeep. As they took off
on their escapades involving experiences and places I couldn't be (because of
an overly protective and possessive mother), they drifted faster than ever.
Then something happened, I don't remember if I wronged them in any way but they
disappeared. For a good part of a decade they were just gone. Making
appearances either when I touched base with Rohit's mother or sister; or when I
heard a mention of Sandeep's sister by Raj. So I didn't know if I should have had
a problem with Sandeep's presence or not. I said so to Rohit.
He immediately pulled out his phone and placed a call to Sandeep
enquiring about his whereabouts. There were more laughs in the five minutes
that he spent talking to him over phone than there had been in the past hour
that we had been together. I assumed that they were close and shared a thought
space where they could communicate emotions without having to spew out too many
words. Something like what Raj and I used to share, I guess. I asked to meet
him too and a while afterwards we were heading west so that we could get
together. I had my apprehensions, the ones you have when you have not seen
someone for so long.
An hour and a half later we were stationed in front of Sandeep’s house.
He lives in a beautiful colony on the other side town. Meeting him was like looking
at the colony, all new, confidence radiating from the new found layout.
Speaking to him then was like meeting this new person who was introduced to you
by someone who was intimate and connected to the both of you. It was like
meeting the child of a father you knew closely. A stranger yet a lingering
feeling of the person being a shadow of something you know.
Thus was the meeting. I don't think the old ways can be adopted so new
friendships would have to be forged. Maybe there are walls on my side of the hedge,
maybe I am colder. Maybe they seek companionship because of the swings that life
took at them. Maybe they look out to anchor to some point in their life which
was not as bare and unprotected as we are today. I don't know. Only time will
tell.
