Fated to pretend

The title is at odds with what I am writing here, but in life, it is rarely is as it seems to be. And this thought has been keeping me up for a lot of nights now.

Friends come and go. Its a part of life. Family stays, but the people in the family change. This cycle- this unending cycle where we are all merely an act. The transient figures who play act and mime- in tune to an eerie music that each one of us hears in our own distinct and unique way.

I have lived in a dozen different towns and cities. Okay- may be not a full dozen but close enough to define my life, for all of  six years now, into different stages based on where I stayed and my friend circles. What happens is simple- we meet people- they leave an impression- maybe we leave some on them as well- and then we finish that chapter and we move on. This is life and thus it will always be.

My existential question however is more rhetorical than anything else- of the many many friends who left marks on our lives- do we meet them ever again?
I have had my share of friends, good friends and chaddi-buddies. We all had a gala time, and then I moved on to another town. Despite all the promises we made to keep in touch- it was never the same again but we never ended up saying our goodbyes. We just lost touch.

My logical mind tells me- it is probable that we will cross paths in the future in the least expected place and in the unlikeliest of times and by then all of us will be so different- we will not share the same camaraderie ever again. Does this all mean that our briefest of moments together, a blip in our entire life, will always be just that- a memory that we can never go back to? Will it just be a photo album that is meant to be reminisced once every decade when we revisit the times gone by and how we are all growing older and realising our mortality every day?

This futile exercise of reminiscence and remembrance deserves an ode to life as we know it so that we may cherish it and not manage to lose too many moments that may never ever again come in the future. Its like seeing a firefly dance in a night and knowing that I won't see that firefly ever again.

These are just questions that overshadows my need to love and cherish- because without an end- what the purpose of doing so? One may argue- the best course is to live in the moment- but I would ask- to what end? To create memories when it will only be a one sided reminiscence once a decade without any conscious understanding if there will be another such incident ever again. 

Brownian Motion

Life is a tapestry of events that culminate in an exquisite, sublime plan. Maybe it is - maybe it isn't. But to think about life in those terms is one of the easiest ways to keep alive hopes of a better tomorrow. I am not complaining about my today- I have a good life, a bit of money, some friends, a very understanding set of parents and a good mentor at work.

But what I miss terribly is the easy camarederie I could share with college buddies. The easy way we would pick off from where left off the last time. That easy friendship that we knew would no longer be as it was after we graduated. I knew, but I never really felt it.

Now, sitting in one of the world's famous cities, working in some of the best offices with some of the best minds, having a lot of things, I always wanted, I miss those easy days when a dinner would become an impromptu sleepover and the days were so much brighter and the evenings filled with laughter.

Now, its calm music, a mad rush of meetings, a delicate cup of wine, a pretty plateful of roast. But the seats are empty. And I miss having the tumultuous roar of friends deciding which cheap beer goes well with the greasy chicken and which movie to watch that night.

Life moves on. So do we. And so should I. But once in a while- the empty chairs takes me back to the times when things were different. It's as if we came together after a seemingly random set of events only to go apart again to perhaps cross each others paths momentarily again somewhere in the future.