Isn’t it odd how we learn to live without those people we once thought we’d never be able to live without? They were meant to be our constants, our forever – yet today, some of these names have faded into memory or lost to time.
I was whining to a friend a couple of months ago, talking about how my friend circle seems to have dwindled – how most times it now feels like I don’t know who to call or message when I want to unburden myself or simply catch up over coffee. His reply was crisp, almost clinical – “Shedding of your friend circle is a part of growing up!” Something bothered me then, bothers me still. Was it perhaps the word he used – do we really shrug off the people in our lives, like the unwanted skin of a snake? While I understood the analogy of leaving behind what no longer fits you and emerging with literal new skin, I remained unsure about the choice of vocabulary – so apt yet so impersonal.
And so I wondered. Dug deep into my personal thesaurus and filtered through my possible choices. ‘Filtered’ – yes, that seemed a better way of putting it across.
I remember a time from my teenage years when my social calendar was brimming. Scheduling plans often felt overwhelming because there were so many I liked to spend quality time with. Friends, family, families of friends – all those people who’d seen me as a fledgling. That was a comfort zone I did not want to lose. But then life got in the way, as it often seems to have a habit of doing. Nothing deliberate, nothing dramatic.
Career choices, changes in residence, marriages, children – just phases of life that brought along changing responsibilities and perspectives. An updated, perhaps even a degraded list of people I now began to hold close emerged. Some faces were no longer seen at my home, some numbers had stopped calling. Some contacts found it easier to block me, some simply decided I was not worth the replies.
And I must admit, while it seems safer playing the victim, I am equally guilty of being the perpetrator. Some names that I distanced myself from, some unread messages that slipped down the inbox with every passing day, some contact numbers on which my finger now hovered, wondering if they (or I) had anything interesting left to say.
Today when I look around me at those I call my friends, I realise it’s a mixed crowd. A curated one, no doubt but not always consistent. I will be honest…I find myself occasionally thinking of those that got left behind, of the times that we shared when we did. There are no grudges, in certain cases there isn’t any hope left either. There are of course, fantastic memories yet also a sense of anxiety cast over the friendships yet to come my way.
The circle has now thinned, the social calendar no longer has too many takers. But then a childhood friend drives over for a 10-minute coffee catch up despite an otherwise busy schedule or a brand new friend reaches out in concern to check how an injury of mine is healing. That’s when the ball drops – the filtering won’t stop but neither will building memories with the new and the old. And through it all, there will remain some precious few who survive the filter at each stage, allowing me to be my true, unfiltered self.
दोन ओंडक्यांची होते सागरात भेट*
*एक लाट तोडी दोघा, पुन्हा नाही गाठ*
*क्षणिक तेवी आहे बाळा, मेळ माणसांचा*
– गदिमा, गीतरामायण