Two's company

This past week/end has been an unusually hectic one. Work has been busy, some paperwork to be taken care of, and then a surprise visit from an old friend over the weekend.

Its too early to claim, but it must be a season of getting together with long-lost friends. After the dinner out in downtown DC last month with a long-lost ex-coworker, that which I blogged about earlier, here's one more.

Had one of these days? Back in Pre-Univ ....staying past the normal hours of a particularly interesting trigonometry or calculus class, working out some of the exercises, like piecing a jigsaw puzzle together? The thrill of a challenge, the excitement over a succesful solve...sitting under the trees of a college campus lawn. Or walking over to a buddy's house, on the porch and working out the last kinks of a particularly difficult problem? Those late nights, with hindi film music providing for a background score, long discussions ranging from the wonders of algebra, the boring notes of physics, the debates on whether differential calculus was better or integral, whether microprocessors were a boon or a bane.....coffee, respective ammas dishing out piping hot food, served right where you were sitting...room service at its best.

My dear friend S was one such. We both knew what we wanted to graduate in. We had the same goals, we studied together but landed in different colleges for undergrad....and once we graduated, it appears, we each parted ways. Each on a different track, parallel but never in touch.

After all these years(10, to be exact), I miraculously got back in touch with her. Surprisingly not through orkut or facebook, gtalk or blogs....it was by sheer coincidence and by unconventional means. Over the past year, we've corresponded. And she surprisingly was able to come to the US on a year long project to NC, she works in Bangalore. On a busy thursday afternoon, I get a call from her.

She : "What plans for the weekend?"

Me : "Oh, nothing- as usual!"

She : "Hm, well a colleague of mine is visiting his cousin in DC, he wants to know if I want to carpool, should I?"

Me : (amidst balancing a celebratory jig and whoops of joy) "OF COURSE, YOU SHOULD!!!!!"

She :(calmly) " Alright, send me your address and I'll print directions. I'll call you when I start driving from here".

As I hung up, an email from our corporate informs us that if the weather gets too inclement on Friday, we could stay home and not drive under bad road conditions. Schools were declared closed prematurely, it was supposed to ice and rain all day on Friday. I pretended to ignore the severity of weather related warnings.

Thursday evening, after finishing my last gym workout for the week, I decided to finish all my weekly grocery shopping chores. The pantry was stocked up, milk and dairy rations refilled....a good part of the evening was spent in cleaning the house, new sheets for the guest bed and a fresh vase of flowers.

Come Friday morning, thank the Lord, the weather was not as bad as was predicted. It was dull, cloudy, and wet. But not torrential rains or ice storms. As she drove her rental car at 11:30 that evening into my driveway, it all dawned on me. The last I had seen her was at her wedding 10 yrs ago. Then I'd left for Singapore and onwards to the US, she (I assumed) settled into a career and family life. Now, here she was....on her first visit to the US, having driven 5 hrs on her own, in not so perfect weather...just to visit me!

Its been an amazing weeekend, as I took her around to the tourist spots best visited during these cold months...Luray caverns, Ikea (I know! But she wanted to go, and I had to hold her back from plundering the place!) and a museum. While we watched Sa Re Ga Ma and Boogie Woogie on Saturday night, it was like old times. Music, TV, a simple special meal of pulav/raitha and rasmalai- gossip, laughter, catching up. I swear, we had no time to reminisce cos there was so much to catch up on. We probably need another weekend to go down the memory lane.


“Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.”
~Henry David Thoreau



Footnote 1 : Last weekend, I managed to catch Jodhaa Akbar in the theaters, a girls outing. I'd recommend it for those a. Who can enjoy screen after screen of HR, in royal glory or b. Enjoy historical period love stories or c. Both a and b.
For attention deficients like me, C would be the right answer.

Footnote 2 : Sadly, I finished the entire series of 8 books in the Mma Ramotswe series by Alexander McCall Smith. I say sadly, because this experience and excitement of having so much to read is very rare. Usually its an uphill struggle to find ONE good book to read, leave alone this many. But I'm already in the waiting list for the next in the series thats due in April. All in all, its been an enjoyable series, I love all the characters, and have fallen more so in love with the Botswana thats described in the book. It really says a lot about the writer.

“Don't be dismayed at goodbyes, 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