Friday Friendship

We meet many people in our day to day lives. They all leave footprints in our memories. Some footprints are like the ones made on sand, they get washed away with waves of time. But some are like carved in a stone, strong and forever. These people may not be around all the time but the memories of moments spent with them are sufficient to drive you through thicks and thins. This post of mine is dedicated to these people in my life.

When I think of such people I think of Friday friendship. The memories that I have of the time spend with these people is like old wine, it gets stronger and better with time. We formed this group in Hexaware and in the start it has four members (the proud founders of this great and nasty association) – Ujjwal, Rishi, Divya and Khushbu. A little history reveals that it started with Divya and Ujjwal planning to go for a movie on Christmas ‘05. Rishi met them on their way and joined them. This was the beginning of an era for us. Down the line it was joined by me, Khushbu, Navdeep and Atul. And this is how it got this name, we all were in different projects (me and Rishi were in same) and so Friday used to be the only time when we all could get together in eve and blow off some steam. And these evening encounters used to be legendary :-).

The beauty of this group was in the diversity of the people forming it. With Ujju as Neta, Rishi as Nautanki, Div as Rotlu, Khush as Abhi-neta, Atul as Happy go Lucky, Navdeep as Day Dreamer and Me as Always be Happy, things have to have happening, interesting and sometimes wayward, atrocious.

And so we bloomed in full glory with time spent in late night movie shows, munching at BTC, hanging around in KK, kulfi at dmart, bowling, gaming, shopping, finding reasons to take parties from each other, teasing, going for a movie in a theatre which is hours away from our place (remember Fanaa), spending eve in marine drive and coming back with someone losing her mobile phone (poor Khush) and finally resorting to blabbering which is our forte.

“What are the plans for the weekend” or “Which movie we are going tonight” or “When is your party” chain mails become part and parcel of our lives and permanent visitors of our mail boxes. Where in everyone is free to pour in any senseless thought and others reciprocating in the same way.

There had been several interesting incidents so far but there is one which still makes me laugh hard. This was when we realized Ujjwal’s aura. We all were going to some place (don’t remember) in the local train. We were sitting in one row and Ujjwal in row front of us. Since he was recently back from US, he was telling us some interesting stories. Then all of a sudden he realized and in fact we all realized that the guy sitting next to Ujjwal was looking at him with so much admiration, liking and love (I know Ujjwal is going to beat me for this) in his eyes. This made Ujjwal so conscious that for a second he forgot what he was saying. That guy’s expression along with Ujjwal’s left us in splits because of laughter. I wished I would have captured that moment.

Another legendary experience was the trip to Borivali national park. I don’t know who made that plan. If I knew that, I would have killed that person. It was one of the lazy hot Saturday mornings, when you were lying in your bed all curled up cozily and suddenly a phone call comes with a weird plan of going out in perching sun and scorching heat to a place which does not offer any excitement. But when it’s a group plan you got to do it. So we all dragged ourselves out of the bed and got ready in record time. After a quick meet at D Mart the route was decided. It was something like taking a train to VT, then taking a cab to Churchgate and then taking a train to Borivali. So we intelligent souls got the train tickets to Churchgate, it’s only that poor we didn’t realize that we are boarding a VT train and not a Churchgate train. That day was a pure lucky day for us, as in Mumbai several people travel in locals without a ticket and never get caught and we; instead of having (wrong) tickets got caught by the TT. Then started a long session of proving ourselves innocent and it did work and we could find a way out by bribing the TT. By that time we all had already turned frantic and were in no mood to proceed further. But few cold drinks, sandwiches and burgers brought the enthusiasm back and we finally reached the destination. And as it was a lucky day for us (I guess now you can sense the sarcasm) we saw some great animals including a donkey, dog, few birds and of course few couples (humans are also animals). Of course the day was long and many lucky things happened to us including not getting a bus on our way back. All in all it was a trip worth remembering.

I think I can go on and on remembering all the good times I spend with this group. We still do hang around together though some people are now little away, only by distance criteria. I love these people and they form an eternal part of me and my life. This is for Friday Friendship, this is for US.

Even though we've changed and we're all finding our own place in the world, we all know that when the tears fall or the smile spreads across our face, we'll come to each other because no matter where this crazy world takes us, nothing will ever change so much to the point where we're not all still friends.