Monday, January 13, 2014

Should auld acquaintance be forgot...

...and never brought to mind?

New Year - watching the ball drop in Times Square - and hearing these lyrics.

Being human I don't think it's that easy to just forget old acquaintances.  When you are younger you want to get to the future in a hurry, forget the past and move on.  As you grow older you find yourself catching up on old memories... remembering each and every one of your old acquaintances even the ones you want to forget about.  And the interesting thing is that time changes your perspective, the ones you thought were hideous, scary and terrified to cross paths with - just cheeky kids.  The bold, confident ones - well they were mired with the same insecurities and self-doubts you had they just hid it better.

So coming back to should old acquaintance NOT be forgot – then what do you do?

You Google them – but what if you had such a common name that Google showed up  3,360,000 results?

Then what if you had the patience to wade through those results and narrowed them to about 100 to 200 likely possibilities.  Well – you start contacting them one by one.

Which is exactly what my classmate, friend and let's not forget rakhi brother B did... and that's how we caught up after 20 plus years!

I studied in a wonderful school tucked away into the Alpine like settings of the Western Ghats till half of Grade 11.  Then Dad moved and fortunately we moved to another picturesque town still surrounded by those wonderful hills.  I transferred schools mid-way, as you can imagine at a kind of awkward age into a totally different system and unfamiliar society.

To my pleasant surprise all of my new classmates were exceedingly friendly and cordial and made me feel totally welcome. In no time I was at home and made some really great friends.  We grew really close.

Then out of school into the big bad world... and some how as time went by I completely lost touch...As stated earlier those days it was all about doing well in college so that you had good scores for applying to Masters, filling in forms and paying the high fees for TOEFL and GRE.  Filling in more forms and paying even more exorbitant application fees, attending interviews ... and so on...your new acquaintances and friends took precedence over the old ones as they faded into the recesses of your memory.

Until now - I am so glad to have reconnected.

To ties that endure...