A popular question to ask people is “who is your 3 AM friend?” I have one such friend who has been my friend since kindergarten. We may live in different cities but he is always just a phone call away. When he invited me for his housewarming and mentioned that he had invited our school friends, I was ecstatic…
That morning, 10 AM couldn’t come fast enough for me. Uber favoured us (me and my family) with an XL premium and that was just the beginning. It was a Sunday morning and Bangalore traffic was still sleeping so we managed to reach under an hour. We had our chit chat and occasionally I dived into my Kindle a bit reading “Mental Models” . So we were there on time to see his family and his brother-in-law and family. After the initial pleasantries, we got to see the house and complimented them for the new acquisition. After some time our school friends along with family started coming in and it was after a gap of many years that I was meeting each one of them. Some of them had grown horizontally yet their nature had not changed one bit when it came down to bravado and arguments. One of them had the audacity to come without his family, we sent him packing to get them.
I was touched by one of my friend’s life story. It was heart-wrenching and we admired the grit and determination of his family to get over those tragedies in life. We had a quick call with one of our schoolmates who was having his birthday and he was pleasantly surprised to receive wishes from 6 of his classmates. We made fun of one guy who still remembers his flames from the school. Another friend still remembers one teacher who hit him with a scale on his knuckles. That too a teacher who did that in the library. God knows what he did. One of the most mischievous guys in the group maybe then. Now this friend and another one had a war of words over who won the Kabbadi match. I was supporting the latter one as he was part of my team. I even went to the extent of saying that we would take a picture of our school certificate kabaddi competition and share it to just prove our point. There was an air of nonchalance while we were having these verbal volleys from the bygone days. My friends reminded me of our after-school gathering places like the sip-up stores, bakery, and cycle stand. I remembered our nursery school teacher who used to make us sleep in the afternoon keeping all those short chairs. We spoke about our teachers. The One who threw chalk, the One who taught us English and I remembered Ozymandias by PB Shelly. Kudos ” How attentive I was in the class”?
No wonder one of my friends told me about my philosophy. I guess he was asking me to let go of that claim for the Kabbadi championship. In those 4 hours with my school friends I learned a lot. Beyond the punches, grey hair and egg- head there was a certain attitude to life and happiness which might be coming from this equation:
Happiness = Number of desires fulfilled / Number of desires harboured
We laughed, made fun and that camaraderie was something which cannot be explained. We took digs at each other and the friendly banter the highlight of the morning. There was discussion around which order in the class these boys and girls were sitting as well. The current generation couldn’t even fathom how we remembered all these nuances from our school days. I admired someone who was learning Gen AI from an IVY league university. Job discussion was less albeit there were some comparisons on salary structures and also of some friends who are working in NVIDIA. Job discussions were relegated to the sidelines in the overall discussions. While we were in the midst of these discussions time had passed and my host friend’s wife had to remind him to pick up the lunch! We all got into the act and we helped the host to get all the items in the house. It was a sumptuous lunch followed by a photo shoot and it was time for us to get back home. Our wives were amazed at how these guys knew so much from their school days.
I had “tried” my best to be consistent with my commitments when it came to school gatherings. I know I need to improve on my other commitments with my college mates and other social circles. At my friend’s house, I saw a nice little Bonsai. It was a great time with friends for life and it made me realise the power of bonding that had withstood the test of time.
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