Shall we meet?

“Ragesh!”, a loud cry comes from outside my balcony, I rush to the balcony to find my dear friend Barath ready to shower his sharp and witty comments, as soon as I come to the balcony.. We just stand there, and talk (put mokkai as it is called now, but sometimes even profound things, like Time Travel etc, he he) relentlessly on one thing after another. As we speak, we spot Samson and Srikanth chit chatting near their house. Both Barath and I cry out their nicknames so loud across the 300 yards distance separating them, they come running, atleast to stop us from uttering their nicknames over and over again, and getting damaged in public as our voices richo- chet across the buildings and produce surround sound. he he. Soon, there would be about 6 – 7 of us there , talking away, ah! bliss…good times , good times.. This was year 2000, when we were in Std X, when we didn’t have cell phones or bikes or cars! But still friends of mine and I managed to meet almost everyday (mind u, this is apart from 6 hours of being with each other in school! ).

Come 2003, after all the tension and hype of all the +2 examnations and umpteen entrances ranging from IIT-JEE’s to an examination conducted by a small college, we are free to roam like free birds for 3 solid months. oh and what fun it was. This time it was different though, we would go around in bikes and the friends circle expanded, tearing the streets, with Suku and gang, stopping at a street corner, to eat something, do some “bird watching” and then tease each other on anything that pops up in your mind, however illogical or senseless they are.. Again as we would meet everyday.. go for a walk around the beach, go to each others home.. We were sure our friends would be home, and if not we know where to find them, and hey u are visiting about 12 friends everyday, so odds are that you will find 8 of them.. I would come home for only for food.. hee hee.. just roam around using 1-2 liters of petrol everyday, and would go out no matter how hot, cold , rainy or windy it was.. so will my friends.. Again, we didn’t cell phones, in fact not all had even land phones i guess..

Then we enter college, well, it is not that easy to catch up with all the friends during weekdays because, by the time all of us come back home, it will be about 5:30 p.m and many people went far , even in other states to study, but even then, we would catch up on the weekends, oh yes! the same roaming around we used to in 12th will continue, only difference is each of us will hav a different story to tell about the good, bad and funny things about our colleges. But this time , we got cell phones, so even if we can’t meet, we woud be sendng SMS’s to our friends through out the day till our fingers hurt and go on even after that. Weekends would be fun, some roaming around, some visiting friends houses, mostly Kalpaka’s and eating out, in some road side vendor’s shop, where we can be our naughty and boisterous selves.

And then we got jobs. All interaction reduced to chats. But if it was so, then fine, but chat we used to do in college!, till the wee hours of early morning like the long late night chats I used to have with Kalpaka, Charanya, Sandhya and Srikanth L. Now, everyones online, but almost no one is talking to anyone, (except for Sandhya, Ghanesh and Ravikumar in my case with whom I chat a lot during weekends, and have lot of fun) Why? because, most are fagged out at the end of a long tiring day of 10 – 12 hours (see, I love my job very much, but 12 hours of work and travel will make tired whoever u are), that no one is feeling sprightly enough to communicate. What about SMSs? Oh, don’t get me started! the SMS craze is over, partly because, now the operators have started charging for SMSs and we got bored of it, and if you have a phone like I do, the Nokia N72, sending one SMS will give u ache in the fingers for 1 minute, compared to the 1100’s and 3315’s we owned in college in which u type 100’s of SMS a day faster than you type on the keyboard.. The main reason is we have now got so many avenues to communicate that we take it for granted, we think , “Well, we got phone and SMS and chat and orkut and what not, we can communicate whenever we feel like”, but the “feel like” does nt come more often and we end up not communicating at all. The gap increases, all the more reluctant we feel to catch up with old buddies, Why is it so difficult? I don know..

Last week, the same 7-8 of us who used to meet daily in shcool days, had to send a thread consisting of 300 mails just to decide when and where we all shall meet together, after a gap of aroud about 4 months. This week, my friend and colleague Rajeswari spent endless hours communicating and organising over two days, just to decide where, when and HOW she and 4 of her friends(Sathya, Swetha, Priya and Swathi, who used to meet daily in college and even in weekends), can meet this weekend.

See the HOW, that is a new clause added, first it was anytime anywehere, then it was anywhere but in a particular time coz someone has n’t returned from college and so on, then it was at a particular time, at a particular place coz people come from far away on a weekend, so they dont have enough time to come to all the friends place etc. Now it is how! ya How! everyone is available, but all are busy, “how can we meet? hey I have work, next week our project release, I have a client call next week, so i ll be home at only 9:00 pm and i have work on Sunday too”, so more often , people silently come home, sleep for a day , take rest and go back.

Weekends, are different now, not anyone to hang around, it is rare, It is 2- 3 months since I went out to roam with my friends, no one is available , no one is ready, everyones just sitting around, lazing, taking rest, me too..

Unbelievable! the things we took for granted, are now precious and rare and almost forgotten.. Everyone is preoccupied, or pretend to think so, or even fool ourselves into thinking that we all are preoccupied. We fee like the “Babuli” character in Std X CBSE English text book. We would have thought “I ll never change” and here we are! Time changes us all is n’t it? It might have changed me too. I don know, I don’t have a version control system installed for my character.. LOL!

All I can say is, next time you feel like seeing ur dear friend, don’t call him/her and ask for an appointment!, but yell out her/his name in front of her house, you would n’t want to miss out the pleasant surprise on your friend’s face when he/she sees you, do you? You want to see him/her in his/her shorts and not in their make up and Allen Sollys, don’t you?

.. And if you don’t find him/her at home, don’t go back! look for her/him, probably they are sitting on the same perch you both used to share many a secret, many a joke, and many a crush, probably even thinking about you….