The way you make me feel

I have been thinking a lot over the last few days (having given up on engineering completely and on life partly). About life, the universe and my skin (I can swear that I have aged considerably in the last 6 months) But given that it’s Valentine’s Day, and enough pink chaddis have already been washed in public, what better topic to write about than people, people you care about, friends, family, foes and uh, let’s just say loves.

I have come to realize that close friends are of two kinds only: those around whom you can be your worst and those who make you want to be better people. And of course, my set of friends is convex, because there are people who are a bit of both. (Did I say I have given up geekdom?) I was talking to a close friend last month and boy, did the claws come out. People were torn apart, institutions were rubbished, bad advice freely traded. No matter how much time passes, we have something in common, something that connects us. And of course, when you connect at the lowest common denominator, you form a bond that is not contingent upon frequent calls and catch-up coffee.

And I have met people who believe in you so completely and unflinchingly that the single speck of grey on your soul seems encompassing like an overcast sky. Friends who make you long for innocence, for doodles, for that last vestige of higher purpose in the recesses of your soul.

Of course you can’t pick between the two. Maybe you need a bit of both in your life, to be flung from one end to another like a ping-pong ball, to avoid being in one place for long enough for you to say, ah, so this is me, with an air of finality and a sigh of resignation.

And I must add that close friends don’t have a monopoly on strong emotions. It is the acquaintances who breeze in and light up an evening with their ridiculous banter. It’s the roommates who open your eyes to a whole new world in your world. The frenemies make you feel like shit with just a cock of the eyebrow and some unguided (but lethal) missiles of words. Keep it coming, I say.

I was an emotional cutter long before this kind of atyachar came to be in vogue.

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It’s raining outside. Rainy days – and nights – are so fruitless that you rue being single. But the sound of rain makes me happy. And that’s more than I can say about most things these days.

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