Back in touch

Back in '92-95, a gang of girls doing Eng Lit. in Pune's Fergusson College were thick friends. They hung out at Vaishali, discussed Phadke Sir's linguistic skills, rued about the lack of guys in Arts, discussed boyfriends (both existent and non-existent) and sacked out in each other's hostels. At times, over spicy 'anda bun,' they discussed the future and how thankfully none of them were even remotely interested in an MBA (so much to study, huh?). Then college ended and some of the friendships frittered away. They'd never been too strong to begin with and had been merely sustained because of a common class, shared passion for idli vadas with 'separate sambar' and Bikram Saluja driving down FC Road in his Maruti Gypsy. Now suddenly the girls had to decide What To Do in life and slowly they drifted away. One of them moved to Bombay and shamefully forgot old connections in the new flashlights; one got busy with some inspiring developmental journalism in Pune and yet another, the spunkiest of them all, surprised everyone by suddenly agreeing to an arranged marriage and moving to USA. The girl in Bombay and the one off to USA promised to keep in touch. But such things were difficult to do in an age without mobiles and emails and with lots of excuses, especially when one had a new and exciting career in Bombay and another a new and exciting husband with a BMW in USA. Fourteen years later, the girls are back in touch. Well most of them anyway, thanks to those great finders, Facebook, Orkut and yes, in this case, even Linkedin. An yahoo group keeps them bound this time as the conversations flit between husband, number of kids, work or the lack of it. There are surprises too. Some irreverent ones seem incredibly polite and some barely heard voices have grown bindaas. Some mails bring memories, some a smile and each of them a reason to look forward to the inbox every other day.