About those friends...

I wrote this a while ago and a friend ( :) Thanks Sameer!) commented on it yesterday itself, just in time for yet another post that was brewing in my head. This December is the season when a lot of my friends have decided to visit from wherever the work and life has taken them. We had been planning the get-together, small trips etc for last six months and I have had a lot of fun past few weeks when those plans have actually translated into action. All these people I have been friends with for over 12 years and we have seen each other's good, bad and ugly! Though everyone manages to spring a surprise once in a while (pleasant or otherwise!) we largely know what to expect. More importantly we have accepted each other for what we are!


Meeting friends after a long time (couple of years at least) and with newer additions, be it spouses or kids, is always a mildly traumatic experience for me! I keep hoping that I shall meet the person I have known. I keep hoping that fundamentals have not changed though circumstances have. I hope the changed circumstances have only brought happiness and smiles or learning and maturity. Not bitterness, not sadness, not the distance at any rate. I keep hoping we shall be ourselves with each other and won't have to don a persona, that we won't mind voicing our opinions, however silly, without fearing being looked down upon. I hope that these people won't hesitate to tell me I am doing something all wrong. And won't mind getting a piece of mind from me. I keep hoping I shall learn to respect their priorities and they will understand mine - however distinct those maybe! Most importantly there would be no judgement.

And bless them, I was not disappointed on any count at all!! (I just hope I did not disappoint them either..) At one of these meetings we were chatting up and a friend whom I had lost touch with for good 12-13 years had shown up! It was amazing to see him having changed and yet not! He was one of those carefree creatures. Now he has twin baby girls!!

My brother, Sid, was visiting for the first time after his wedding. So his wife was a big 'x' factor. And to say I was apprehensive would be an understatement of a century. But seems there was nothing to worry about! He the happiest person on earth! And the wife's a complete sweetheart!! He has a changed a great deal from what I knew Sid to be but he is still the same!! Do you know what I mean??

I have spent a lot of time on free saturday evening with yet another school friend of mine who is visitng with her baby girl! We have been together through school, college and till date though we are and have been for a while as apart as possible geographically and we have not been great at keeping in touch regularly. We have even grown up to be two women with as distinct preferences, priorities, lifestyles, natures, personalities, choices as possible! But we picked from from where we left so effortlessly! I am so me when I am with her. I can say so many things to her that I possibly cannot to anyone else and would like to think that she feels the same! There are things which need not even be mentioned but are understood. With her I do not carry any baggage of being anyone at all! I am not judged as a 'that person working there', neither as a 'wife of that person' nor as a 'daughter of someone'. I am me! And it is an amazing feeling!!

So amazing that my eyes sting!!