Prelude

Vids: yep!! good old school days!!

Vids: 8->

Friend: and college was totally different :)

Vids: i like school days better, though…

Vids: enthannariyilla… [Donno why..]

Vids: oru unity undayirunnathe pole… [Like there was some kind of a unity..]

Friend: enikku nere thiricha :D [For me, it's the opposite]

Friend: i made better friends at college :-?

Vids: hehe!! ente ippolathe close buds school pals ane!! :P [My close pals are still the ones from school!]

Vids: college-il ake oraal ane real close… baaki ellam shallow.. [I have only one close friend from college.. Rest all are shallow..]

Vids: athentha? [Why so?]

Vids: u studied there for 12 yrs rt?

Friend: no no….5 years in one class, next year in another, next 2 in another

Vids: eh??

Vids: vere school? [another school?]

Friend: +2 *name_of_school* :D

Friend: till 4 th *name_of_school* :D

Vids: hmm… so u studied longer in engg coll

Vids: mebbe that’s y

Friend: yeah kinda :)

Friend: school friends kept changing

Vids: hmm..

Vids: i studied in my school for 12 long years

Vids: :)

Vids: u can imagine the depth of friendship i had with my school pals

Friend: yep !! :)

Friend: 12 years is a loooooong time :)

Vids: more than a decade :o

Vids: wow!! i realized that only now!!!

Friend: hehe :D

Friend: yes ~! one decade of same set of friends :)

Vids: oh my god!!!

Vids: i am gonna blog about this!! :D

Friend: ;)

Friend: go ahead ;)

Vids: thanks!! :P

I realized only last night that I’ve known my close buds for over ten years!! I mean, it’s really astonishing to realize that some of the people I talk to today came into my life more than ten years back, considering I’m only 22 now! How many people have been there in my life for more than ten years? Besides parents, bro and relatives, of course.. hmm..

My neighbors.. They’ve known me for twenty one years so far, I think! My first year was spent at the rented house we had, which I have no memory of living in.. Anyway, in this neighborhood, I was the only girl; the other houses were populated with a father, mother and two sons. So I was pampered a lot, obviously, by the mommies of all these sons! I remember something funny that I used to do when I was small. Every time I bought a new dress, hair-clip, bangle or whatsoever fancy, I used to take a trip to all these houses to show it off! Thankfully, I don’t do that now!!! :D Anyway, one more female member joined us some time later; she was the eldest and most respectable one out of the lot! We were a battalion of eleven, two girls and nine guys, in which two of them were younger than me, one guy of my same age and six of them older than me. I remember all the Deepawalis, Onams, Vishus and Karthikas that were spent together. It was one hell of a bonding :-) It does feel like a two decade long relationship…

My school-van-driver.. hmm.. Not really a decade, but nine years is long enough. His name is Madhu, maybe over 55 years old when I was in tenth standard. He was not actually the driver, he was the owner. The driver was another guy. Madhu Uncle used to sit inside to take care of the kids to see that all of us behave properly inside the van! I remember only a few things about him though. He had a beard which was longer than usual; some of the hairs gone grey. His voice when raised, scared the hell out of quarreling, noisy children!! There were some kids who behaved properly all the time, at whom he never yelled. I was one of them! [I used to be a quiet girl till tenth standard] I was the first person to get into the Mahindra van named ‘Kannan Travels‘ every morning, mine being the first stop. This means I get to sit wherever I please to sit every morning! Sometimes, I used to walk to the place where the van was parked, and get inside rightaway to avoid standing and waiting at the stop. Everyday, at sharp 7:45 AM, the driver will start the van and my journey to school thus begins! For almost half an hour, Madhu Uncle will be chanting prayers and that time, only devotional songs will be played inside the van. He used to keep a couple of pictures of Hindu Gods on the dashboard, light incense, and hang a small garland of fresh jasmine flowers on the pictures. He goes to Sabarimala every year, and that’s the time all the children used to monkey around in the van, unable to be controlled by the substitute! The last time I saw him was two years back near my school. After a few minutes of chit-chatting [because he had a van full of kids to be dropped at their respective homes!], well after chit-chatting, I must have gone where I was going. I don’t remember. Anyway, I don’t know where he is now or what he is doing either. But that’s a person who I’ve talked to, almost everyday for nearly a decade!

My friends from school.. My close buddies from school, they are the ones who I still hang out with. And I can’t believe that I’ve been knowing them for ten whole years, well, actually sixteen years! I remember my first day in school. I joined a little late in first standard, only in the second term. I had a bad leg accident a few days before the class started. My bro’s friend was riding the cycle, me sitting in front, on the bar on which the cycle’s seat is fixed. My foot was caught between the cycle’s spokes. That did a lot of damage to my foot, me being a small five year old kid. It took a lot of time to heal, leaving a scar that’s visible even now! I couldn’t walk for a long time and I had to stay away from school even without attending the first official day! My first day was the first day of the second term. My class teacher, Ms. Gladys, made me sit on the second bench, out of consideration [:-|] with a girl named Rekha, whose pink plastic earrings I still remember!! I don’t know whether it was the big plastic earrings or the neatly brown-paper-bound and plastic laminated books that made me uneasy. Well, I think the primary reason was that she kept stamping my wound which had not healed yet. On complaining [I was a small kid, forgive me!], Gladys Teacher moved me to the back bench where only a girl and a boy were sitting. Gladys Teacher also asked the girl to help me catch up with my studies. So, the first girl I talked to in first standard was Minu. [I remember the boy, Thomas, who was sitting in between us! We soon chucked him out to the end of the bench, for Minu and me to sit together!] We still call each other up, hang out together, and she never forgets to wish me on my b’day! I studied for twelve years with her, and then two more years at college. She became my senior in college as I joined a year late! She was the only familiar face for a while, until I made some new friends from my batch. Was that history repeating or something? :P Another great friend who I met in school is Maria, one of my best friends, who gives me advices that actually work! The good thing about such a long friendship is that, even if we don’t call each other up frequently [maybe only thrice a month or even less], every time that ‘hello’ is heard over the phone, I feel a certain comfort and warmth, and never feel that we’ve not talked for that long! I find my true comfort level only with a few people, and these great ones I found in school are some of them. Everyone from my batch, during the learning phase of our lives must have built up a common wavelength or something, which got only better with time and that too, a whopping twelve years! When I talk to Maria or any of the others, I do not feel that we were talking everyday for over a decade, and kept talking with the same fervor even after school. I feel like I’ve known them ever since the day I was born! If all the talking were represented by a line, I would neither see the beginning of it, since time has effaced it as it grew, nor the end, since we are never gonna fall away! I’m not gonna say how many times that line would circle the earth, since that line’s tacky(-ier.. hehe!)!!

I had to sit with this blog entry for a long time. I intented only to mention the astonishingly interesting discovery and realization of a decade of friendship. I never thought that it would turn out to be a probe into my life instead! I had to clear out a lot that I wrote, since it was just too many details! I’ve said what I needed to say. Gonna keep the rest to myself! ;-)