Monday, March 24, 2008

A promise kept

If I was any less theatrical about it, then the point would be lost. Almost eleven years ago I made some friends, who to this day remain close to my heart. They remind me of a time when I was different. When the world was constantly intimidating, and yet frequently awesome. A time when the canvas of my imagination was untainted. Hopes and dreams pranced playfully behind my embarrassing photochromatic spectacles.

An Indian kid in New York. I learned so much in that city. I learned about love, as much as I learned about humiliation. I learned about ambition and about race. I learnt about money and the fact that I didnt have any. I learnt about promiscuous girls and about blondes. It was tritely put ' the best of times and the worst of times'.

The shy and awkward kid I was became less shy and more awkward. I was trying to fit in into a world that I had no understanding of. People making out in stairwells, hot teachers, kids the size of school buses ( maybe a little smaller), tattoos, piercings, and unwanted pregnancies . All of these things were uniquely American and very new to me. Yet in the maelstrom of changes, I found some friends who have forever remained close to me.

The years I spent in Delhi, I wrote them and they wrote back. I even kept all the correspondence from each and every one of them . But then I grew jaded and shed my sentimentality of these things. But we all stayed in touch. Through the years, I had made a promise that I would come back.

Well, I did. So much was the same. A lot was different. People grow over time, people get caught up with lives - theirs and others. But the spark always remains. Old friends are difficult to shed. They remind one so much of what one was and so much of how far one has come.

To old friends and memories.

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