Sashaying down the curvy stairwell at my champagne cocktail party, all bouffant-ed in a Karl Lagerfield gown I was trepidatious. I was meeting school and college friends after years. Hosting a champagne cocktail in Delhi also means a walk down the memory lane. I am surrounded by friends, who look the same and yet I feel so different. I remember an introvert that I was, so different to the exuberant person that people see today. I am looking at the girls from school, lovely, attractive and assured sashaying through the evening.
Here I am with friends, new and old, enjoying the warmth of one of an enchanting evening I’ve ambassadored! A successful singer had said, “The realisation that you are alone in this world came very early to me.” I’m momentarily stumped by the cynicism. But, I’m hearing enough of the same in different expressions to have second thoughts on friends, family, neighbours et al. “Neighbour?,” opines someone. There’s not even a nodding acquaintance. Relatives? The best you can fathom is mutual tolerance, and a wariness about being drawn into the quagmire of their problems. This is the most aired view wherever the mildest reference comes up on the subject. So, is there some big social change transpiring? Is the day around the corner when every ‘friend’ will be weighed in the scales of ‘use’ or worse, profit and loss?
Even as I shudder at the thought and thank God for the friends I have I tell myself to ‘think positive’ and behold. And yes that evening in Delhi thronged with high school and college friends from back then at an old times ‘school’ lunch. It all started with trepidation that made me think that it might turn out to be an afternoon worth a great deal over the social ‘mwah mwah’ do’s that are so hankered after by many. But what transpired this week has a lingering memory of being special. We were meeting after years, and had moved over time into such varying occupations. We’d change somewhat in appearance. A waif had developed girth and what looked like a faint mustache. But did any of these criteria rob any of the old bonhomie. Not a whit! It was as if time didn’t exist! We laughed and ragged each other with old barbs and we held forth through a rambunctious lunch that prolonged into tea and an afternoon as carefree as i had in a long, long time. We lent support to unhappy tales, felt proud of achievements, wanted the tiniest of details of the lives and as I write I exult in the affirmation that the Dodo and friendship are not interchangeable words .
The author is a lifestyle columnist and a designer. You can mail her at nishjamwal@gmail.com [1]
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