Someone decided today’s is best friends day.. We wish you celebrate friendship every day.. Reposting..
I must write
For I must capture this feeling
Will it do, to put it on blog?
While my head is still reeling..
Shall what I put in words,
Typed with my hand shaking
Make sense to me
When I re-read it in the morning?
The strong sweet memory,
Of friendship and night long talking.
A decade has passed since we met
And yet, in happiness, my heart is gushing.
Have you had that one friend who seemed to always understand exactly what you wanted to say? A person you might have known all your life or just met once in a while. You might have had never ending conversations or exchanged but a few words.
It could have been days of discussions on random topics or that one never ending coffee as you stayed up together supposedly studying for the exam the coming day. You might have giggled over something silly or raged and ranted about a calamity. Maybe played a chess game or watched in comfortable silence a lecture on what exactly is economics. Did you fight the big bad bully together or sneak out and meet up in secret? Then directly after returning home call him on his phone.
How about someone who liked the same song as you? Or maybe you met in college and were from the same city. Were you back benchers together or freshers at your very first job? Someone who would sit hours listening to you talk or someone who preferred to be as lazy as you. The evening wore out as did the bean bags you remained lounged in. Maybe he was as bored at a party as you, till you started to talk and did not want the evening to end. Perhaps, you met while dropping your kids off to school, and she knew the most tempting of recipes of the South Indian dish you wanted to try making.
It doesn’t matter that you still wore your hair in plaits when you last saw her. It doesn’t matter that you might have moved out of that colony while he still hangs around those kirana stores whistling at girls on the topmost floors. That the concept of whatsapp was not invented when you last spoke. Nor does it matter that the things you spoke about are driven away from your mind by the everyday noise that engulfs us.
“There are some things you can’t share without ending up liking each other, and knocking out a twelve-foot mountain troll is one of them.” – Harry Potter and the Philospher’s Stone
What matters is the memory that can shove away all the worries. A simple name that is enough for your shoulders to shrug the burden they carry. For you to breathe in deeply. For you to relax and indulge in history. To catch hold of whoever is ready to listen or you find around you and reminisce of times and tales that remain imprinted in your heart.
We live in a world surrounded by means of communication. Phones are mobile, right in our purses and pockets. Emails follow us around. We know what five hundred of our friends are doing at any given moment thanks to facebook. People you have never met, and highly likely are never going to meet up with, are essential part of your daily lives as their number beeps on a whatsapp group. However, columnists never tire laying stress on how isolated human beings have become in their busy crazy lives.
Here is what I did today. I used one of this technology to contact a friend I haven’t met in a decade. End result, I felt like bursting into poetry. Of which a poor sample is above.
Distance makes the heart grow fonder. Technology can bring everyone closer, but the key is to open your heart and let it flood with the feeling. Allow it to sparkle inside and warm you. The feeling that you had when you spent time with a friend.
And now as you reach this last sentence go type on a keyboard or touch your phone screen and get in touch with such a person. That peculiar friend whose thought is enough to make you smile or the crazy group of friends that you haven’t met in while. Talk a bit of nonsense or enjoy the silence. Speak of all the myriad of tensions or enjoy moments that are carefree.
And if you end up writing poetry do share it with me..
Pic credit youhappyihappy
originally posted April 6 2015
lovely piece, rhea… and the thought of bursting into poetry makes me hum. we are more and more isolated today but not because of tech. the reasons hide in us, not in stars or the ever forward search of humans to discover more, dislodge no can do. so i am glad you write that about using this very thing to actually touch a pal and reach poetry. look at us… see how much this new space can give and sometimes in ways even the traditional ways can’t. loved the writing…
Thank you so much Indi di.. It was a little daunting to post something this highly infused with personal reflections, but then I said what the.. and posted.. ya the other day when we were discussing with Katelyn about the Thai dramas I was thinking how wonderful it is that we can come online and get to find people with exactly the same interests as us..
anyway this friend, whom I emailed, told me she did not want my whatsapp number, with its constant daily pinging, because she loves the gushes of happiness my out of the blue mails bring to her.. no wonder I love her..
Gushes of happiness – thats exactly what I feel too while exchanging my thoughts with the writer here 🙂
Our older generations may not approve of technology as a medium of interaction but I feel like its the best kind of bridge between people like us seprated so widely by distance and time zones. Keep writing Rhea. Your writing resonates with most of the things I feel but never really find the time to acknowledge or share in this daily inevitable humdrum
Thank you Ankita for saying such sweet things. It is through these talks aided by technology that I have realized we think alike.. what a beautiful discovery!
How lovely Rhea. And what a timing it is that I get to read this. Just a while back, a dear friend from the neighbourhood visited to bid adieu as she shifts out of town. Our chat led to how we had made friends, becoming a part of a huge circle in the neighbourhood, all the fun that we had and how things started withering away as our priorities and life’s responsibilities took over. Overwhelming as she left, but she did say that this friend circle will always be a special family – that little bit filling up my heart.
As most of the friends that we made when we were in two pigtails, reconnect through a hand held gadget, a thought comes across that there never was a dearth of love among friends, only distance and time had separated us.
And in between all these, we enter a world filled with unknown names and make friends with these names so quickly, gelling almost instantly that at times we wonder how this could be even possible. But then, this is how it proves that friends are made not by matching details, but from the heart.
Neighborhood friends will always be special. My dadiji never stops mentioning her neighbours and what they would cook for lunch even though she must have not met them for years now. sad she is leaving durga di.
That is an insightful thought that we have always wanted to stay in touch just not had a way. Now with internet it is possible. in some years maybe this friend who moved away will remain closer to you than you thought. touch wood. Thank you for reading the articles di.