A walk to my birthplace Day 47 (130 Km covered so far)

Today was a busy day as I again drove to Mumbai early in the morning and returned back late. Though I did not walk the physical distance, I feel like writing as I walked on the self exploration path.

Today was get-to-gather of our school class. We all passed out from school in 1985. Two of our friends were visiting from US and that was good enough a reason for about 30 of us to be there. It was an informal gathering and we just sat around the room chatting. A few of our friends are great singers and they obliged to our requests. One of the friends had us in splits with his stand-up talk show and I pitched in with a few poems. Overall mood was pretty relaxed.

Some of the friends were quiet so we decided to draw them in with interviews. I happily offered to be interviewer and the whole idea was to create some humor. By unanimous vote, we called one of our classmates, who was well-known and I must say well-respected for his pranks in the school. Though he was quiet today, we anticipated a lot of fireworks and fun once he got going. I asked him, “So tell us something that you always wanted to do but could not”. We all hoped that we will get to hear something peppy about a prank he could not pull off! Instead, he thought for a moment and said, “I wanted to serve in Defense Services but I failed to clear my exam and that will always remain with me”. Everyone was quiet; I made some stupid conciliatory noises and moved on. I conducted couple of other lame dialogues and thankfully it was lunch time so we broke off.

It set me thinking. As we chatted along in small groups, one of my friends summed up my emotions beautifully. “When we meet someone after a long time, we talk to the image we have in our mind rather than the person in front of us!” We do not realize a lot of water could have flown under the bridge and things are never the same again.  Meeting someone after a long time may be the reason for today’s faux pas. I sincerely hoped that otherwise I generally talk to the person in front of me and not the image in mind!!