The Meeting

One of my best friends is someone who I didn't meet for over a year into our friendship. For the people that we were, it was an oddity that we became such close friends over what was just a series of bytes exchanged over the net (I have one more reason why they call it the net, because you can catch some great friends here). Series of bytes is an understatement though. We literally shared our lives, or so I would like to believe. We knew what was happening with our common and non-common friends, our families, on the work front, inside our head, outside our head, whether emotionally, materialistically, spiritually and otherwise. Our wavelengths matched perfectly. Our attitudes were similar. We were both rational, ultra-liberal, thinkers and believers in reason and the merit of work.

It was too much of a coincidence. We would ask each other if we were for real. The friendship seemed too good to be true. As a consequence, we would wonder if it would be the same when we met, whether the people we are would match the person we perceived each other to be. The burden of expectations, I tell you! But we never let it supersede the joy of a good conversation.

Living in different cities created a problem. But never there is a problem for which there is no solution and so we found our. Contrary to expectations, I was not excited about the prospect of the meeting. Perhaps, I was so preoccupied before the meeting that the 'ifs' and 'hows' never ran into my mind. But I had circled the date on my mental calender!

We met in a third city. We spent a whole day together. And it didn't feel any different than it would meeting your old friend after a long while. She didn't look any different from what I had seen of her in the photographs. She spoke like she usually did. It seemed like we had a history together and this was definitely not the first time we were meeting. We went animal-spotting on a safari, got soaked in the rains, had imli dipped in red chilly powder and ice-cream, baked pizzas, plus clicked loads of photographs (as if you didn't know!).

Though everything about her was just the same as I had expected, there was something about the meeting that was markedly different. I don't know if it was the place, the people, the chemistry or just destiny.

PS: Another one of the posts that I wanted to write but did not have the time for earlier!