After ten years

As on most weekends, tonight's agenda consisted of meeting up a friend for dinner. But tonight's program differed in one major way: I had met my friend P last when I finished my 10th standard. Which was more than 10 years ago. After that, in a short while, we completely lost touch with each other. Until one fine day, somehow we got each other's email-id and mailed again. After that, it was an on again, off-again kind of contact - sporadic emails once in a year probably. Then sometime towards the end of 2004, I got a call from a strange number. It was P! And what's more, she was in the US on a company project and in the same area as me! What a surprise! I don't remember how she got my cell phone number but I was totally thrilled. A friend from the past! We managed to talk over the phone a couple of times but somehow couldn't meet. Then P returned to India and that, was that.

Then again, this Friday, P mailed again - she was in the US again, sent by her company back in India. This time I was determined to meet her and we decided to meet up today. I was extremely excited about meeting P again - when I saw her, I realized that she hadn't changed too much in appearance. The only difference was that the folded pig-tails of the days of yore had been replaced by a staid plait. And she said that I had lost weight (eeeeehaw :-)) and that my face was no longer round (gosh, exactly how fat was I before?)

And to my surprise, there was absolutely no awkwardness at all. I for one, felt like I was continuing a conversation left over from the previous day. And the talk flowed. We spoke of all our common friends, about each other's lives, about our hopes, our plans - about everything! It felt so good :-)! P was not my closest friend back at school - we both used to compete for the first rank (yeah, yeah, I was a geek back then) and hence never got too close to each other. But surprisingly, after I left school, I was more in touch with P than with my close friends from that school.

Thanks to my dad being in a transferable job, during my childhood, I had to go through the process of making new friends every so often. When I was younger, it was much easier. Now, even when I go to new places, I no longer make too much effort to make new friends. Even with the people I have become good friends with now, there is something missing with them which exists with the "older" friends. Have not really figured out what that is. But one thing I do know, there is no feeling quite as warm, comfy and happy as the one you get when you meet up with an "old" friend. That's why tonight was special!