An old friend comes along

Recently, in Bangalore, I met an old friend of mine from school days. We were meeting after six and a half long years. While me and most other classmates of mine had taken up the oft trodden path of engineering and software jobs/MBA, Himanshu had been very clear from an early age about joining the armed forces and had accordingly joined the NDA after school. Meeting him after all these years has been quite a good experience. For one, we had so much to catch up on and our conversation made me realize how different our lives have been since we passed out. I mean his experiences over the last few years have been unlike anything I’ve heard of. It also made me realize how much I have changed from school days – the transformation from a shy boy to a young man, relentlessly and aggressively chasing his ambitions while trying to find a purpose in life on the side, was put into perspective in that one meeting with Himanshu. Secondly, it was great to see that although there were times when we ran out of things to talk and there were silences, we were quite comfortable with the silences till something else came up to talk about. I guess time and distance don’t really affect good friendships much, do they?