To the 8 years of Togetherness
A phone call with my very close girlfriend after a gap of more than 2 months made me realize how everything has changed in the past few years , I realized it a very long time ago but today I accepted it . There is a fine line between realization and acceptance , I was still living in the first stage. But today was the Day to accept it. The friendship dates back to 2005 , 7 + years now , then I didn't even imagine that someday the life would be what it is today, that we all will be in different cities with different circumstances and priorities , that we won't meet every day or let's get Little realistic once in few months, that we won't be able to talk every day , that whatsapp will be the first mode of contact . None of this was thought about , the set of expectations from our future were very different . We have thought of working in the same city , living the kind of life together that we couldn't while we were in hostel and this is not unrealistic neither hyped nor does it look like we were trying to live a REEL life?? But still it didn't happen, why?? Maybe because we didn't try hard enough to make it work or the circumstances didn't support us , Or did we know already that this is not going to happen and we chose our own ways assuming that's how it's meant to be
8 years ago our lives would be somewhat like this- Go to college, meet up in cafeteria ( yes, we hostellers were too close and wouldn't leave a chance to catch-up in the canteen even if we shared the same room or corridor!) or in the mess for lunch ,go for our respective classes , evenings would be spent gossiping & checking out girls roaming around, chat endlessly with a bowl of Maggie in the night and crib about the awful bf's we had or how broke we were , in addition we'll have late night parties, movies, the much awaited Official socials with famous Boys hostel and regular room-parties where the agenda was Gossip( wonder what we talked about for nights together!)
The CHANGE: After 4 years of graduation it changed to meeting up once in few months at least ,having a telephonic call whenever we couldn't decide on what to choose or what to gift our respective bf's along-with regular calls every few days to heal our otherwise tired souls, I knew it was changing but life was moving at a fast pace and all of us were running fast to keep up with it.
At the end of 5th year there was plethora of change , When i was in noida pursuing mba she also moved to noida again as my junior in same college and that period was d best time of our friendship. after the end of 7th year there was too much disturbance, both of us trying hard to keep up with the situations we were put in, trying to make the best , moving too fast in a direction we didn't plan for us, but that's what we were told by the more experienced people which we didn't want to believe otherwise. We thought this is it, we are settled now , this is how it will be from now on-wards , little aware that the major change was yet to come. How ignorant we can be.
You were the first one to get married, it changed the equation totally , took a lot of time for ME to adjust , changes are not only inevitable but Hard too. We again tried to manage with the situation and tried keeping the bond intact , the no. of calls decreased as whatsapp came into picture ,the no. of meetings decreased as the distance increased from few kms to few hundered kms ( I haven't yet met her, its been almost a year now) Not that we didn't try but the situations just didn't let us and one person cant manage , it has to be mutual , think we missed that part.
Now our conference call goes like this- The married girl (Shriya) talks about how marriage has changed her life for good or bad, what new she cooked and how she is managing her personal and professional life with my wonderful jiju. The other one (ME) is going to get married in few months time and we plan my trousseau and what place i'll be going for the honeymoon and how happy we both are.
But there will be an effort to make the equation work and lots of adjustments in expectations , maybe our friendship will survive all this , yet again, or maybe not ( I will rather be optimistic). I cant say if the bond got stronger or not , but what matter is its still there and I hope it stays . That change is Inevitable and the sooner we accept the happier we would be , situations change , people change , your importance in their lives change but the time we shared is a treasure ,we cant live it again and that's the beauty of it and that's why we value it so much.
In the end what matters is ,we still share our lives.
“We'll be Friends Forever, won't we, Pooh?' asked Piglet.
Even longer,' Pooh answered.”
Shriya Sharma - You are still the self Proclaimed Princess.
