Friends

I’m sure I have written about this earlier… but considering the depth of my literary exploits over the last decade or so, I can’t find one of this topic….

You know you have a good life when two things happen – one you are alive and two you are loved. Now the "being loved” bit may come across as some dopey theory that you would not expect – at least not from me. But in retrospect if you think of your life, no matter what your circumstances were, things were always ok when someone who loved you was there; just being themselves. And if you do reflect on your life and you mind fills with myriad images of when you experienced such love and kindness, then consider yourself lucky. You have a life worth living. So when I indulge on one of my guilt trips, which I have been doing quite often now a days, it is good to sit back and count my blessings.

I am a very loved person…. Now some may say that is a narcissistic thing to say. But I truly am. Just saying that makes me smile. Apart from the obvious people who should love me (but whose love I have never taken for granted) there are my friends. If you have known me long enough, you know that I don’t have many friends - could count all of them on the fingers of one hand and maybe even have a finger left over.

I, at some point used to be an introvert. Over the years profession and circumstances have turned me into an extrovert – at least visibly. I come across as a friendly person, easy to talk to, decent sense of humour – mostly self-depreciating, fun to hang around. But those who have stood by me through the years know that not much has changed over time. Most of my friendships are old - the oldest one is around 16 years old and the youngest one is around 4 years old. It’s those few who I depend on to pull me out of the depths of depression and self pity when it strikes. Friends with whom the barrier of time seem to lose significance. Connections which have been dormant for 7 years, 7 months, 7 weeks or 7 days…all get picked up where I last left it. I can literally start a conversation with these friends after months of total radio and email silence. No awkwardness, no searching for a topic, no dearth of topic, no tapering of conversations - even the silence is comfortable. Then there are the names.. you know they reserve that name only for you... chotta shakeel, mandu, babli, kutty; even the names are enough to conjure up happy images. Sometime the conversations are pure crap… shooting the breeze and still the cathartic effect  that it has on me is immense. The only reason for that being that the friend knows that I need to shoot breeze and if I had something to discuss I would – at my own time, at my own pace and at my own terms. They are just there for me. Sometimes it feels selfish. Do I do right by them as they do by me? I don’t know. Maybe I do and that’s why they still stick with me; or maybe I don’t and they stick with me inspite of that. That’s what friendship is all about, right.

I have been separated from each of my friends at differnet points of life. Life just happened – circumstances changed, events occurred, time passed and people moved. At each instance, the pain of not being able to see them each day, meet them, talk to them face to face, share food with them and most importantly not being able to hug them – it’s just as unbearable as the pain of not seeing my kid for 4 months straight. But then as you grow older and wiser and you revisit some of your friends and their lives – while there a little part of you which wants time to turn back, sometimes with more intensity that you could imagine, there is another part of you which wants to get back to your life as is. You think practically and then you see how your lives have gone different ways and you are just lucky to stay in each others life with a belief that if you really needed one another, you would be there. No matter what.

The belief keeps me going – never have I felt such gratitude towards my friends, than at this hour of the night sitting alone in my apartment. The memories of the times we spent together are enough to last a lifetime and in my deepest and darkest hours, I draw life from them… you do mean a lot to me…..