Old Friends

Yesterday I found the blog of an old friend, someone I last saw years ago. I haven't talked to for her around 3 years now. Reading her blog took me down the memory lane. I was a different person back then. I was younger, optimistic, healthier and happier. I was also a student with very little money. It was nice to reminisce about a simpler time in my life. I also thought about my friend. If I had met her now, I am not so sure she would be a friend, probably just a pleasant acquaintance. She and I are very different. And that made me wonder, how many of the relationships we have in our life are just because some people are there at a particular moment. That friend in school you grew close to because they too hated maths. Or that college roommate who was allotted the same dorm by chance. Maybe it is not just our friends. Maybe the career or education that we are so proud of is also a product of coincidences.

It also made me wonder, how easy is was to make friends when I was younger. I think if I had met that shy coworker who sits on the opposite desk some years back, we would be very good friends. Or the guy next door who annoys everyone on the floor by leaving his beer bottles outside his door. He is not very different from some of college friends.

As I basked in the glory of my very unremarkable observations, I thought about the friend who I had lost touch with. I remember the first time we got our salaries and went out to celebrate. We had tried sushi and realised that everybody who said they loved sushi were lying. Nobody wants to be the weirdo who hates sushi. People gobble up raw fish, so that they are not social outcasts. Our eventual dinner was "pav bhaji" from a roadside stall. Would she be stunned to know that I loved sushi now? Or had she strangled her free spirit too, by stuffing herself with raw fish? 

I wanted to know. I was hopeful. I thought about reaching out to her. But somehow I couldn't. I have a photograph of the night, when she and I tried to eat sushi. We were young and hopeful. We had talked all night about life, love, philosophy and our dreams. And that's the memory I wanted to preserve.



Old Friends by Simon & Garfunkel