As another epoch in my life draws to a close in a matter of months, I feel in my heart an unfamiliar tug of emotions and a rush of bittersweet memories. The rites of passage from an institution isn't a novel experience for me, they have been the bookmarks in a largely sordid and insipid book. Also I am not inclined towards the hysterics and melodrama that ensues at the time of bidding farewell to an institution.
Being endowed with a deeply cynical outlook towards life and all that comes with it, I have rarely paused to ponder about such stuff. Such thoughts are generally relegated to the locked attic in my brain which I rarely pay a visit, and if so its a perfunctory one, whose sole purpose is to reaffirm my own humanity.
I have always maintained the belief that in the journey of life there is never a co passenger for life. People accompany us in our journey to some milestone and then depart for their own destinations with their own preordained companions. Hence I have never been overtly sentimental about friendships and relations. People come and go. Some leave indelible impressions, etching their presence permanently, others are like the morning dew, beautiful while it lasts and leaving just a whiff of their fragrance in our lives.
But my nihilist stand has been shaken in these four years of glorious existence. As I took a break from the mad rat-race, I realized that only a gift of the gab and a self deprecating humor had made me an affable companion. That inadvertently I was seeking solitude in the midst of company. That I had not visited my locked attic in a long time.
Four years have passed since then. I no longer recall the milestones that had marked my participation in the race. I no longer despair much at my silly failures and nor do I rejoice alone in my not-so-big achievements. I no longer lock my attic.
I have realized the magnanimosity of my friends of yore, who have conveniently looked beyond my shortcomings of nature. I have realized that some people can accompany you in your journey of life, only if you don't push them away because of your fatalistic nature. I have realized that you can gain new insight into and be pleasantly surprised by the friends you have known since you were three feet tall.
As for my present life, I have made a lot of discoveries. I now know I can share rooms with the most slovenly person I have known. I also know now that its possible for a group of people to share everything except their tooth-brushes and underwear. That Communism maybe wasn't that a bad idea, equitable distribution of money leads to everyone having an equal share of the beers on the table. That it is possible for guys to think about their friends while sharing some food. That it is possible to take care of a whole wing when everyone else is broke. That it is possible to miss a friend whose sole purpose in the company is to eat every other person's brain with his wisecracks. That it is possible that a person can share designer stuff among his more uncouth friends who don't value the finer tastes of life. And that someone can a take a fall for you.
And some friendships cannot be defined. They bring a glow into your whole being that makes the whole existence beatified. Their absence makes you fret with anxiety and their presence worth the wait. You feel the urge to invite them into that private attic of yours from where the both of you can peek into that thing intrinsic of you, your soul. I am a skeptic of the idea of soul mates, but maybe this is the thing closest to that.
