This summer is all about catching up with old friends—two separate people from what seems like two separate phases of my life. There was surprise, genuine joy and relief; in one moment I became younger, chattier and freer!
The first one I met after 14 years. Junior college was the last we saw of each other (if you discount the one brief meeting at the train platform). He moved to the UK to study, though mutual friends would update on information once in a while. This was before the orkut, Facebook period. Our friendship after college was peppered with a surprise birthday call out of the blue, a few emails every 6 months that eventually faded out, till orkut revived the interaction for a brief period and then Facebook contributed to the meeting. When he suggested meeting up as he happened to be in my city, I was reluctant because it had been many years, I was genuinely busy and I didn’t want to get in touch all over again only to fall in the familiar pattern of losing touch. My sister insisted and I agreed to go.
He looked the same, only taller, a lot taller actually and still remained that incorrigible, untameable, naughty boy. Meeting him was easy as if the years of non-communication had never happened, as if we met regularly. The stories just tumbled out, the laughter overflowed and over two cups of green tea in a coffee shop we bonded like we were back in junior college bantering and badgering each other.
That one-hour meeting made me realize that I had changed so much over the years. So many aspects of my personality had undergone a change—I became more conservative and cautious, more critical and less cynical. Many of the stories I couldn’t remember, some were hard to believe, a few mortified me and most had me laughing. Even if we were in college, supposedly grown up, we were still so innocent, still untainted by the need to earn money and fame. I wouldn’t say we were naïve, we were aware of what the world was, what issues people dealt with, the corruption of body and soul, the inevitable prevarication that awaited; we knew everything but we kept it from percolating our lives just then. Even in our attempts to be accepted as friends and lovers, as students excelling in athletics, studies, extracurricular activities, there was nothing we did that made us lesser people or compromised our conscience. That was the innocence of our times, of the place, where we worried about acne and looked forward to dressing up on Saturdays, of winning the house of the year and any subterfuge we ever indulged in was only to escape the teachers’ wrath.
We parted with warmth and laughter and hugged out our happiness at seeing each other. The elation of that meeting lasted for the rest of the evening. It made me yearn for the time when all I still kept some part of me open, when I rebelled against things openly, when despite everything I let myself enjoy and let others get a glimpse of the real me if only for a while.
And then yesterday was like another chapter opening in the recap of college years. After searching for this friend, through every known source and resource, through searches and requests with people I barely even spoke to in senior college, I find her. An innocuous little posting on a common friend’s page got my attention. There she was, the one I was searching for over 11 years, spotlighted because she just changed her profile picture on Facebook. As much as I hated those irrelevant scraps of information, yesterday I couldn’t deny it credit. Why did I want to find this girl so badly? No reason, other than the fact that there are some people whom you, every now and then, always wonder about, what happened to them, what they were up to and where did they end up. She was one of those people who drove my curiosity.
It wasn’t like we were great friends, we just bonded over the last year of senior college, where we shared our common fear of the department head and bandied our resources to get the better of all the study material, reading material and research material needed to get decent grades and more so decent papers written in English. That last year was marked by many things but particularly with her was the fact that I worked as a kind of deterrent to an overzealous suitor. I didn’t know whether I should have been horrified or insulted at the insinuation that guys didn’t come near me. I mostly had a “don’t-mess-with-me-or-I’ll-bolt” attitude and more of a “deer-caught- in-the-headlight-looking-for-escape-routes” expression but somehow that seemed to work on cooling things down for a bit. Later, I became a participant in her game of chess played across the classroom with only 42 players and 12 benches and desks. There could only be so much rearrangement done with seating and after a while both parties called it quits and we could all breathe and concentrate on graduating with better grades.
Over this warped bit of love on the run, we became part of the same study group and bonded enough for memories to last a lifetime. Two years after graduation I bumped into her in the train, between our stops I barely got time to acknowledge that she was married, not to one we thought she was marrying but someone knew, that she moved localities and had a new number and before either of us could even whip out our phones to exchange numbers it was time for me to alight. Her unfinished story left me wondering what actually happened to her. It was like reading a thriller where the last few chapters would never be written because the author had flown the coop. I am never easy with suspense; I can’t not know things; it makes me restless and nervous. Now that I’ve found her and we’ve almost reestablished connections I’m sure I’ll find my answers.
This summer is proving to be different from the others I've experienced here. The temperature hasn't spiked to killer degrees yet, the work hasn't slowed down yet, I haven't taken out my parasol yet and my glasses haven't fogged up everytime I move from indoors to outdoors yet. Still there is a difference. I can feel that I am doing something different. I've started this blog, haven't I? Unlike people looking to escape the heat, I am going nowhere. This summer is my escape into nostalgia, into remembering who I once was. Are they any other friends who want to get in touch?Go ahead and make this my summer of 2011.
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