Catching Up With Friends

Saturday, October 3^rd: It seems it was my day of catching up with old buddies.

I got up from my slumber at around 1 o’clock in the afternoon and was going though the list of missed calls I had received. I was surprised to see calls from my friends from my previous organization. I returned their calls, but they did not answer it. It seems they were busy. I was again surfing my mobile and thought of giving a call to all my ‘purane’ friends.

My first call was to Shyamoli and she has the history of not receiving my calls ever in the last one year since I found her number. However, it was my lucky day and she received my call. Surprisingly, she recognized me in a jiffy (as in I do not expect people to remember me after 5 years of not being in touch) and she sounded happy talking to me. We spoke about what each of us is doing currently on the work front and some old stuff. Then I enquired whether she was in touch with anybody else from our old hostel? She replied that she is not in contact with any of them save Nami. I was astounded to hear her name because for the last four years I have been searching this girl like crazy and was unable to trace her. I took Nami’s number from Shyamoli and hung up.

Now, I think I should give a little detailed information about who Nami is, so as to acquaint you with her. BACKGROUND CHECK: Nami was my hostel roommate in Assam. She was triple my size (was a sumo wrestler compared to my petite frame) - not fat but huge, ectothermic, fair, chinki, sweet spoken, smart and homely female. I say ectothermic because she used be snake cold in summers and ‘chalta firta heater (I used to call her that)’ in winters.

I was tomboyish so she ended up being my wife in the hostel (Please do not let your imaginations run wild). We became best of friends and she used to actually take care of me as a wife would do of her husband. She used to wake me up in morning, make my bed, bring my breakfast from the mess to our room, iron my college uniform, wash my clothes, keep my stuff in place, wait for lunch etc, etc. The list will go on and on and on. So, I will cut it short here with the statement that she was my wife.

I called up Nami – must tell you that I was scared that she might have forgotten me. She was sounding groggy. I spoke to her in Assamese initially, asking if I can speak to Nami Guhain, she said that she is Nami. I simply said I’m Richa, and waited for a reciprocation or rather recognition. And what I received was “Kutti, kamini, nalayak, kidhar thi itne din (You good for nothing oaf, where on earth were you for so long)?” I was so happy with the reaction that I actually forgot the fact that we were talking to each other after four long years.

We spoke to each other for nearly 40 minutes and refreshed almost all the memories we could in that span. She told me that she is a school teacher in the same school that she had studied from. She added that she had joined in for a BEd course in another college after finishing her Grad. She asked me how I was and how was I doing. I told her about my where and how-abouts and we just discussed certain things about other friends from our hostel and promised to be in touch with each other this time and hung up.

Then filled with nostalgia of happiness of talking to friends – I called up Sahil.

BACKGROUND CHECK: Sahil Singh is my school time friend. Though we were arch enemies in school - nothing related to studies or sports or other curricular stuff. It was all a misunderstanding between us that lead to a proper cat fight (rather cat and dog fight) with no winner. For the next four years that we spent in the school together, we never spoke to each other. The funniest part was, he used to be my next door neighbor and he used to come to my house every evening for a cup of tea. Oh! How much we detested each other. So, you must be surprised that how are we talking now. Ya! Some 2 years back I got his mobile number accidentally and so I called up just to try to do away with the earlier riff. And we did.

So, back to Sahil’s call – He was in the hospital down with typhoid. He had come to collect his test reports so he told me he will call back. I was a little worried but said ok. He called me back after an hour. I asked him about his health and he replied that he is fine now and recovering. We refreshed our school memories, discussed our current jobs, future plans, etc. Then we discussed about the reason for our fight in the school and we realized that the mistake was altogether somebody else’s.

Anyways, we spoke for around 40-45 minutes. Then, through the day I spoke to Pankaj, another school friend of mine, and Vikas. Pankaj Singh was my senior in the school and his mother was friends with my mom so we had a little family relation as well. However, Pankaj was one goon in the area and considered himself the reincarnation of Casanova, which was reason enough for me to detest him. But, later we somehow became good friends.

Vikas Singh was a guy who I met for the first time during a train journey. We clicked and we became friends – I will write a separate blog for this particular meeting as it really is interesting. So, let’s leave it at that.

However, the day was great – it was sort of a phone reunion for me, which made me really happy.