The Bangalore blogs : 1 : Laughing at Space and Time

What do Space and Time have to do with friendship? Next to nothing if you as me.

I'm presently in Bangalore, the technological capital of India, spending a short vacation in the company of some dear friends I made way back in boarding school. While I was on the flight, watching the fluffy heads of cloud families drift away under the plane, my mind occasionally recycled the same question for my deliberation. Time had put almost eight years between my friends and me and the geographical distance between us had grown ever wider since we parted ways back in 1999, when I changed schools. Space, therefore, had also played its role in distancing us. Certainly, the convenience of the Internet had allowed us to be in touch, but even this technological marvel is a pallid substitute for the level of intimacy and involvement that is characteristic of interaction in a boarding school, where friendship means a sharing of lives and experiences, the likes of which is seldom found in other places. So, I wondered, what would it be like to be with these friends after so long...I had been out of their lives for more than 7 years, I hadn't been there to share the joys, to be of comfort in the sorrows, to have gained an insight into the experiences that shaped their lives. They too had not been witness to much that had occurred in my life. Would it be uncomfortable? Would I miss all the jokes? What on earth would we speak about? ... ... ... These were some of the questions that played hide and seek with my excitement as the aircraft drew closer to the green city.

Over the last couple of days that I have spent here, each and every one of these questions have been summarily dismissed from my mind, irrevocably invalidated by the sheer affection and warmth that my friends have shown me. We’re catching up on our lives, that's for sure...sharing past experiences, future dreams etc., but what is outstanding, is the wonder of the present. In the present moment, we are just the same friends we were 8 years ago...it’s almost like we never really parted ways. If anything, we've grown fonder of each other. That is what real friendship is about...a force that has no meaning in terms of time and space. It is concrete and it is abstract, tangible and intangible. It is found in the camaraderie of shared meals, of long after dinner walks and idle banter and it is also found in the smile that passes between us every now and then, entire volumes being communicated in the smallest of gestures.

This is the new definition and form that friendship has assumed for me. Only I know how inadequate all of these words are in expressing what I feel in my heart...but if in these paragraphs you find something that makes a little sense, then I've probably been successful in sketching a small picture of what I mean. May you also know such happiness in case you haven't experienced it already. God bless!