This is a rather difficult one. I had a tough time deciding which friend I wanted to write about. Not because I have a lot of them, but because I have very few of them, and they mean a lot to me for a variety of reasons. While someone has been with me since my childhood and has seen me go from what I was to what I am, someone crossed my paths in my formative years and knows me in a way that many others do not. Yet someone came to know me largely in a professional capacity and has grown to be a close friend over the years. It was indeed a tough choice and finally I decided to write about someone who has witnessed the most amount of change in me (as a person) over the years that she has known me.
It is said that friendships forged during childhood usually turn out to be the strongest ones. I do not agree completely to this one, though I agree with it in principle. I think the amount of change in circumstances, personalities, situations that one sees over the period of the friendship is what tests and forges a friendship. And in this respect, there can hardly be any other person in my life more appropriate than the one I am going to talk about today – Arundhati, or Aru, as I (and many others) call her.
Next month (or maybe this one – I don’t remember exactly), it will be a decade since I have known Aru. I was newly introduced to the internet those days and used to do a lot of random blog-hopping. On one such afternoon, I came across her blog. Liking what I read, I left a comment (with a link to my blog, of course). She read mine, commented and we kept in touch via blogs for some time. After that, we moved on to chatting (Yahoo Messenger was HUGE those days, if anyone remembers) and then along came Orkut and Gmail/Google Talk. Admittedly, the earlier years of our friendship were nothing much to talk about. In fact, we used to talk only twice a year – once on her birthday, once on mine. :D I was also much more of a heavy duty philosophy fellow back then as compared to now. This wasn’t something she liked too much. :P We started talking more regularly after a fallout with a common friend and since then, we have not really looked back. She has ALWAYS been there whenever I needed someone to talk to, to offer (or not offer) her unique brand of advice, or just to hear all the crap that I can spout (philosophy dies hard, you see). I have tried to be there for her as well. We both have seen each other go through many ups and downs, and it has been an eventful journey so far.
I cannot begin to explain how thankful I am to have a friend like Aru, and I won’t. She knows, and that is enough for me. This is just to tell her (once again) what she means to me. However, I can definitely say that having her around has made life a lot more fun, and happy. As we complete a decade of this wonderful (and at times, blunderful) friendship, I have only this to say – Stay crazy, we already have enough sanity around. :)
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