Monday, August 11, 2008

All The World's a Stage

WHY DO THEY LEAVE

so many people
come and go
i am the only one
who remains
in this strange
world of mine.
____

I was talking to a few friends today each one of whom came into my life at such distinctive phases. Some, whom I played with about fifteen-twenty years ago when we were small urchins running around here and there. Some, whom I met in middle school and high school and senior grades - we all grew up together - stepped into adolescence together. Some, whom I met during Undergrad - we all slogged together, had fun together, stepped out of our homes together - became independent and stood on our feet together. Some whom I met being a grad student - we all worked together - laughed together - realized that we were no more as young as we used to be - shared nostalgia about our childhood, school and undergrad years. Then some whom I just met in the last few weeks on my new job or as late as yesterday before they left, are leaving or will be leaving to different places, to their own lives.

Dad had a transferable job. So when he used to get transferred, we used to shift to a new place, a new town, a new city or a new state. All my friendships used to get snapped. Yes, there was this excitement of going to a new place but also this challenge of making your place, again from the scratch, in that new group of kids that would be found there. So if till yesterday, in your old locality u were the team-captain even though u didn't know football, today u have to know football to even get to play with these folks. All those years, I kept on making new friends and losing the previous ones. It was so painful. So much time it used to take to discover & forge a close friendship and then suddenly you have to let it pass. Not until the social networks came to the web, could I actually have the option of reaching out to my old pals. So today when I talked to a few of these people from various times across the spread of my life, I made a U-Turn and went down the memory lane for a while, and remembered those times some as old as decades back and some as fresh as yesterday.

And all the while the question in mind was : "WHY DID THEY HAVE TO LEAVE ?" I know there might be new friendships waiting to blossom, that there will be friends we'll spend our youth with, friends we'll get old together with, friends who'll accompany us to our deathbed. Some of them would be new, some of them might be old. But for those who left (or will leave) us, why did they have to leave. I know that we can call them any time we want to. But essentially, they seem no more in your lives ? Don't they ?

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