False promises

“We must always stay in touch! We should make it a point to meet once in a year!” “Yes dude! We have to!” …..and they depart. Teary eyed, remembering every moment of their last few years together.

Yes! That is the biggest and repetitive lie all of us have said atleast once in our life. 10th farewell, +12 farewell, College farewell, You have said it. And no one can be blamed for it. It is, perhaps, how life works. And we all gradually learn this ugly truth. Sadist as it may sound, no friend is permanent. You will have friends through out your life and the number will keep increasing but your old friends will get pushed back in your old sweet memories  reminiscing now and then . Baring one or two of your closest friends, notice how your school friends got replaced by most of your high school friends, your college friends over your high school friends and so on..

If distance can be a bitch, work can be a bigger bitch, tearing many a friendships apart. They say time is the biggest healer and a destroyer.  But when distance and time comes together, the speed at which the bonding breaks down is dissociative. Speed, distance and time are not mere parameters for equations of ‘laws of motions’ but also ‘laws of emotions’. Recently, a junior got posted in my section and my boss attached him with me. These are the newly recruited batch,fresh from their colleges abiding by all the promises a fore mentioned . As I was interacting with him, he reminded me of my good old days. He went on and on about how many friends he has in Bangalore and how they all caught up with their hay days. His excitement and affection towards his friends amused me a bit and I gave him a wry smile, the exact smile my senior gave me one year back. Okay let the lad have his fun while it last I thought.

I am seeing a lot of post and photos on Facebook by my junior batches. They just had their convocation. During the period of college farewell to their convocation, I am sure they must have met up a couple time travelling 100′s of kilometers. They have all joined their jobs recently and got their first salary.Money and time does not matter to them more than friendship.The first thing a person does when he/she moves in to a new place is to get an internet connection and install Skype. Lots of hugs, lots of group photos and that must have “graduation caps in the sky” photos.  Too much love! Too much friendship! Does not seem right somehow! When is the ‘time’ factor going to act? When is their ‘work’ going to burden them?

As one advances towards mainstream job life from his training days,time full fledgedly works on him/her. You get to know your colleagues better with time and start hanging out with him/her outside office. Your STD calls to your outstation friends reduces and local calls start increasing. Then one fine day you make your first mistake. You are out hanging out with your friends and then your old college friend(s) calls. You pick up and tell him/her that you are out with friends and you will call him/her tomorrow. That ‘tomorrow’ never comes. And then you text him/her saying that you could not call citing long working hours as your lame excuse. And Vice versa. It works for couple of times. But then, ‘distance’  plays a dirty role by bringing in ‘insecurity’ and ‘jealousy’. Your friends feels that you have forgotten them since you now have new friends to hangout with. And they slowly give up on you and they move on. But then, the love for each other still remains the same but in the form of cherishing memories. And those memories keep coming every time you log on to Facebook and check out your old albums. You show them that you miss them in the form of a ‘like’ and a ‘comment’

Priorities change. Visiting home becomes more important and logical than visiting your friends.Its not that you do not miss your old friends. Maybe you just want to get over them because remembering them just does not allow you to forget your past. Clinging on to your past will do you no good. Life is a big novel after all and how it ends is totally upon you.But when you meet your good friends after a long time, irrespective of the duration, you can still catch up with him/her from the point you left, the last time. But then you have a Timer on, reminding you every second that you have to go back to where you belong. After all, “good times comes in packages of 24 to 48 hours post college life!”