Meeting after Lifetimes

Don't be dismayed at good-byes. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again.  And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends" - Richard Bach

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Nostalgia is like dusting an old forgotten book found accidently in the attic. You drop everything else, and pick up the book. As you skim through the book, You observe that the book has dog-ears. A silverfish tries to run for its survival. Despite the dust causing an irritation to your throat, you smile. The smile lasts longer, as you drift into a past – the past that is hazy, where the smaller details have faded away as events have filled the past. The past is of a distant world. You do not know if the transported memory of an old world is fiction anymore or factual incidents. It is blur as an old photograph.

 You try to retrieve as much as you can, catching yourself smiling longer. The past and the present suddenly turn into a unique moment of stillness. You push the uncomfortable obstacles in the attic and plonk down for a little longer. The dust and gloom is hardly claustrophobic. You flip through the pages of life. You find a bookmark with a heightened emotional message written on it. You smile and vision how much things have changed from then. How silly the emotional uttering’s are. Today you have turned to be more measured, weighing every word you utter. You look at those silly, queer moments, through the eyes of a stiff, careful, calculated, educated and refined intellect. It beats you that there was a silly child with a free and often wild spirit. The spirit is gone. It’s only in the remembrance of it all that it is alive.

Meeting friends after lifetimes is indeed certain with friends...a hope I have carried into dusty attics. Friends have come alive through the pages of childhood after 15 years, even 25 years hence. The spirits of the “then”, the childlike signature giggles, the funny mannerisms that you had as a child, has uncomfortably become stronger. 

There is a beauty in the unsaid. Oftentimes life has no explanation to things – and things are better left unsaid. The “why” of life need no logical explanation that education has anyway spoilt us with. Why did Hail not stop to write to as many 10 Lavanyas' to see if that ONE was after all her friend she had lost. Her persistence in writing emails with the hope that one email will come back to her with the affirmation that a dull mortal will be found in the midst of a 100 million people! And, above all she would find me in the same way her memory had pictured me. Why? Why me?

I was an ordinary girl, sitting in the sides of my class. Left alone. Introverted. Quiet. Hardly naughty. And yet, why?

“oh my gosh... i can't believe i managed to find u, do u remember who the hell i am... how r u, ur parents and bros.... its ages.... lost contact after u'll left goa.... reply soon”

I was elated! I still am, because I found my past, in its most beautiful manner. I am richer through the revival.

The impatient excitement to get the affirmation is seen in the desperation to hear: '' yes! You have found me! It is the same Lavanya you are looking for!” Is it the same Lav? I wonder.

“i checked a couple of times yesterday to c if there was a reply from u but then thought it being a sunday u might be snoozing away to glory... yes... now goa is just memories as v too finished up with goa, we sold our place 4 yrs back and mom and dad moved back to cochin as dad and mom were not keeping too well... Lavanya, it feels like i am dreaming, i can't believe i got in touch with u.... how can i not keep in touch with u after trying to find u for so long..... fill me with all the news of the last 25 yrs hehehhehehehe.... i want to chat soooooooooooooonnnnnnnnn”

How can this happen? Would I let down my hair and be a wild-child again, caught in the momentary excitement and scream with joy! Or just be measured, with a polite response of sweet nothing, that ends with any possibility of communicating further? The latter did not happen here. Hail flew down to meet me – when she was heading out to relocate to a foreign land. We meet. Give big-booby hugs. Giggle like how we did when crossing the river to school, realising that our panties would get wet with the high-tide, and we cannot lift our skirts anymore!

And then Abi. I could not recollect her, until I dug-up the faded school picture. I hesitantly put my finger and guess it must be she! She wrote to me “One thing i remember is your khaki coloured school bag” she later told me that she remembered my smile, and that it looks like it is intact now too! It brought back a flood of nostalgia. I promptly wrote to her: “Yeah, now that you remind me of my Khaki bag, i think those days you would get Duck Bags! and the selza ink pens, where students would be more interested in turning the nob at the end of the pen and exchanging ink! U do remember my sense of "humour" - i remember nothing of it! guess it has all evaporated!!! its dry now!”

The khaki bag was probably what my parents could afford then. A bag that would be able to hold the weight of books for at least a couple of years...and the ink bottles that would be enough to fill the pens of my siblings and last longer than a ball-point pens that you get these days. The discarding culture of pens along with other things in life, is what we have learnt to do without a though,  when the ink goes dry!

Then, again, a miracle that seldom occurs thrice in a lifetime – another friend's desperate search finds me to her! Shaz, after many years of searching, going to places where I could be found, realized that I had moved away from the sleepy town of Mangalore. I no longer lived there. A girl who wanted to keep the promise of unfailing closeness. She wrote a letter in blood that that I will remain her best friend for life. There was no telephone then, and the blue inland letter with the stamp of Gandhi was a promissory note. I remember feeling shocked, and unsure if I needed to respond to the letter in an equally dramatic fashion of writing a “love” letter in my blood! One would need a spoon full of blood to dip and write!

I see a simple message in my inbox “hi Lavanya am shaz ur old frnd,hw r u doing n where r u ???”

We have spoken to each other a couple of times. She lives in a distant country. We have talked about the little crushes we had, the pranks we played on friends, sitting under gulmohar trees in the school veranda and talking about this and that, and doing girly things together – of great importance. Shopping for the holders of “maturity” – BRA!

Having no clue of the intricate details that goes into selecting the upholders of life, the size, the deign ...all we would have seen were the bras our mother hung out on the clothesline, or a sister’s or a distant aunt’s perhaps. You knew you would never want to get into such HUGE nets of support! Very sheepishly telling the shopkeeper that we are there to buy, hmm, the word just not coming out of our otherwise strong, booming voice box! The embarrassing looks on our faces when the shopkeeper asked rather crudely “what size?” You are stumped. You would want to bury yourself into the earth! You think he would know and just pack what will fit without a fuss.

But no! He picks up boxes after boxes, showing the variety that are displayed in an “on-your-face” manner. How on earth do you know the equations of measurements? What does A, B, C and D mean? 20, 21, 24 all seems just the same. “Mom did not educate us on this – I am sure she does not even know if we need one!” The peer pressure to wear a bra was not really uttered by the girls in class. I realize the quite endurance of unspeakable stress comes through with growing. Anatomical change being one in equal order!

Nostalgia lives on. Goodbye merely means “until we meet again”, and friends are the miracle of life that show you have much you have grown. Or rather, how much of the child you left behind IS with you.

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