Unrealized friendships

Everyone has one of those dark days. The times spent gloomy and not feeling good, you know. I have it often. Most of my days are spent in retrospection. One of the many ways, I get back to blogging is by thinking on some thoughts or experiences in the past and then weaving more and more thoughts on them. Writing a post has uplifted my mood in many ways.

I remember in 2008, after I came to Bangalore, and was at home, without job, I was so eager to make contacts, and get into conversations. I was so active in twitter, and also tried back to back blog posts, so as to relieve my mind of unwanted thoughts. I read many blogs based in Bangalore, and sent them appreciating mails. One of them immediately responded, and we started chatting up, and ended up calling up. She has grown so popular and has even started a brick and mortar store now in Bangalore. And though I know, she is extremely busy in her new passion, I sometimes have wished to be part of  or one of those lively gang of friends, the updates of which she posts on Facebook. But, something hinders me from being too personal, maybe its her busy life or her popularity or my diffidence, but the relationship seems to be stuck at formal.

Talking of the gang of friends, takes me back to the college days. After studying in a girls only school, I was eager to make new friends in college as well. I cannot explain the reasoning, but there are times I felt that the opposite gender can make very good friends. A good example is a marriage in which you treat each other as best friends. It doesn’t mean they should be the only one. I do have a friend from the school days, who has been my best friend till date. In college, I realized that leg-pulling can ruin many emotions. I am not sure whether its the narrow mindedness of a small town, but every time I spoke to a boy classmate, there were giggles, unwanted eyes watching our body language, and then the subtle hints in the every conversation afterwards. There were days I wondered where I went wrong, and why I cannot make the friendship advances to the people I wanted to be part of my circle. And thus, there were many such unlucky(??) people from those days.

This also hindered my mind from growing broad. The ripples of this after-effect haunted me in my initial workplace too. I have lost many relations owing to the fact that I could not respect and appreciate the purity of friendship in those precious times of my life.

After I moved to Bangalore, very few people called me. Almost nil. One more important aspect I then realized. The investment of time and effort to keep the relations alive. This was another tip from my mother. At this older age, she is so busy on phone, I wonder how she could get so many friends. She revealed that most of the times, it was she who made the call. The famous blogger turned author, Preeti Shenoy, too talks of the same, on how to invest in creating friendships.

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This post was a result of her TOUCH writing prompt, based on her forthcoming novel, The One You Cannot Have.