For once Orkut is doing some good. After what seems like an eternity now, in the last few weeks, we the classmates of St. Xaviers Loyola Hall having been catching up and adding each other in our networks. It is such a pleasant feeling when you run into a friend from so long ago. At first there’s apprehension – “Will he/she remember me?”, and then when they say “Of course I do!”, you know its true. It has been a pleasant feeling running to classmates of yore, discovering that few are already married, some still searching, some already have kids, while so many others have just moved to different countries. And yet, it seems so long ago now.
Last month too I ran into some of my closest friends from my college days. As I kept looking at their profiles and adding them, a flood full of memories came back to me. These were the guys whom I spent every single day with. It was such a daily ritual – getting together every single freaking day and talking about the same things over and over again. And it was not just them that came back to my memory, but with them, their families, their houses, their life, everything around them came back to life. Its been almost 7 years I have met much of them, and yet I remember everybody’s mother, father, sister, brother, dogs and what they do. I remember their houses, every nook and corner, the food I’ve eaten in their houses. I remember the late nights we’ve had, the bike rides, the parties, the hills, the life’s firsts that I did with them. It felt wierd – it almost felt like I was discovering a part of me with them. I added them all to my network.
Two different times, two different sets of people, and yet so many memories associated with them. One from school days, one from college days – they were something. I feel glad that for once Orkut has been useful. At the very minimum, I know that those from my past are still around, somewhere, each in their world, happy. And I could probably drop a line whenever I felt like it.
The funny thing is: After the initial flurry of “Hey do you remember me!” scraps and adding each other as friends and quickly knowing the whereabouts of each other, we quickly go back to today’s world, today’s friends, today’s problems only to resurface again months or years later, when we run into each other all over again, to realize how much time has yet passed by.
Maybe that is how it is meant to be.