To old friends who are forgetful or far away….

I recall one time, this friend down the road whom I hadn’t spoken with in a long time said, “I will come around knocking at your door to make a time to catch up.” I agreed even as I wondered about the futility versus utility of ‘catching up’. This existential issue bothers me now more than ever since I am in my forties.

In my youth there was some thrill, excitement about meeting up all sorts of people whom I had befriended along the way. I was single, available and purposeless – or you can say trying to figure out the purpose of it all. Everything else was secondary – career, partner, good food, good clothes, nice car, house, looks – all that mattered to me then was to change the world and to talk for hours about injustices in my home country.

But then as it happens, I too strayed from the dream path, owing to the necessity of making sure that I had some pennies on me, a roof over my head and some semblance of a career. It went on and on and here I am today – the same person with lot more experience of life, a roof over my head, food in my pantry and some work to keep me busy. But I have lost the thrill and anticipation that used to come with meeting friends, catching up over a cup of coffee, going for a drink or a walk in the park.

Now, I am back in my second home, Sydney after a gap of four years and I fondly remember the many connections I had made over nine years when I lived here. With my friends in India, I talked of my mates in Australia as members of my global family. I felt that a permanent kind of ‘invisible’ support, empathy and kinship existed for me and it kept me safe and protected. I thought that it really didn’t matter where I wandered or what brought me back – my mates here would still like to catch up as they would be as interested in me as I was in them.

I started looking for some mates with a lot of enthusiasm but more I tried to reconnect more I became aware that my efforts were futile. The connection was dead. There was nothing there but a shallow, polite interest on their part that dissipated once the phone call ended. That was that. A rolling stone gathers no moss, I have been told by many people across the continents. It seemed like when I left my mates in Australia I also exited their mental space. As a global villager I took their presence with me but they held on to nothing of me and their au revoirs were final goodbyes.

I was perhaps too unstable to have any permanent connection with…maybe they were tired of me — the friend always in need of advice, assistance, empathy, support by virtue of being a migrant. Not one who is busy digging gold but more akin to an Indian sadhu (ascetic) ceaselessly in motion searching for TRUTH.

It was their (my Aussie mates) collective conscience which manifested in the form of an invitation (visa) through their government to their country – an invited guest, vetted guest, processed guest thrown at the deep end of it all. They woke up one morning and found me amidst them looking for everything which sustains life. They did a great job but behold I inadvertently conveyed to them that I could do without them. In a way I ‘dumped’ my Aussie mates by packing up to wander again.

Now as I wandered back again in, logically meeting me would be a waste of time for all these stable mates. For me it would involve repeating my story to all the mates, telling them what I did in all the four years while away. I felt there was not much point in making efforts to catch a train, to make them pick me up and devour their precious time.

All this catching up could be done in the form of an email status report, which my mates could have read in their own time and come back with some or no feedback and it would have satisfied the little curiosity which we all have about each other – I wonder what she has been up to? Easier to catch up on email, the person is better in your inbox rather than in your face. In emails you just share bits of information but when you meet in person you have a bigger responsibility to engage with the person.

I often felt catching up was all about checking on each other, to ensure that the other person has not left me behind or vice versa; to see if there could be any synergy; to keep up with the social necessities; to make sure that when one has a party there are some people around to invite over.

Why catch up? Why meet up? I had carried these questions with me to India and found somebody I thought could answer this question. A very inspiring woman who lived by herself and whom I befriended. She was very young in her nineties and lived a queen size d life till last year when she left the physical realm. She told me, “You meet people to share”.

She explained that when you share, for example your pain – it gets distributed, dispersed among the people you with whom you talk. Your pain gets reduced in size. So it’s downsizing pain by sharing. Similarly when you share your joy, it becomes a bigger joy — so it’s upsizing by sharing.

I have faith in this explanation as given by one of my dearest mates so for now I shall continue making efforts to catch up with all connected, disconnected, disenchanted, disengaged mates of mine. I intend to hand over personally the status report of what I had been doing the last four years. It won’t deter me that I have grey hair (though I try to keep the grey bits coloured or hidden), that I have yet to properly tune into the colour of money, that they had four years of respite from me hassling them to catch up. I am still as insignificant as I used to be, just a speck of dust which can dust itself out of any space.

In the meanwhile I shall catch up personally – because I am a being, with legs to carry me around and many tales to share.