Friendships

I have been thinking about friendships recently due to this post as I can totally relate to the first line - I always take my friendships too seriously. I guess since moving out of the house, I have felt slightly distanced from my family and therefore, I leaned on friends. Fortunately, I was lucky to have great people around me who cared for me immensely and were always there for me.
The first memory of making friends I have is in our colony, simply because they were my age group and lived in the same building so we spent evenings playing all kind of silly games, running all over the colony, learning cycling together, climbing one tree and fighting for which branch we will lie on, trying to eat shahtoot (don't know the english for this!) fallen off a huge tree. During summer vacations we would spent the whole day together trying to build brick bridges on puddles of water accumulated from rain, playing ghar-ghar, climbing atop car garages, choreographing various hindi movie songs (don't know why!), enacting out plays and fairy tales (I remember acting out Rapunzel quite clearly). As we grew, we studied for boards together, discussed our first crush, first kiss..all the juicy details! These are the friends I still am most comfortable with - even if we meet after long, there are no awkward silences and we can start off where we left. Recently during one of the said friends visit, I was surprised how quickly we were discussing intimate details of our lives...it is just so easy to open my heart with them.
My later school years and college friends seem kind of fleeting now - we were close then and had some great times together, however, I haven't been able to keep in touch with them. I also felt since we were all preparing for CAT, somehow a sense of competition kind of took away the closeness we shared. I also realized that if I feel betrayed by a friend, I don't forgive easily, something which I am still working on. In college, I found out that a person who I considered very close had taken offence at something I had said and instead of confronting me about it, she sort of bitched about it to someone else. I have never been really able to pick up threads from tha friendship again, which I really regret.
Business school friends hold a special place in my heart as one of the reason I survived staying away from home, dealing with the growing distance I felt with my family was them. We stayed up nights working together or just chatting, shared in the stress and misery and the exhilaration of each others achievements. I met people completely different from me and still got along. I had bitter fights with one of my friends such that he wouldn't talk to me for days, both of us completely did not and still do not get each other, however, still deeply cared for each other. This friend would drop me home in the middle of the night when we were later working in London just so I am safe even if he had to crash at a friends house and sleep on the floor. Another friend flew in to Delhi from Bombay just for my wedding even though we almost hadn't been in touch for a year. Another guy who I barely knew in b-school went on to become one of the closest friends in London. He would come over whenever I was feeling lonely and blue telling me he was only there because I cook well! He is a father now to a handsome young boy.
Which gets me to New York and how it has been difficult to make close friends. I have tons of friends here and hang out every weekend with a different set of people. However, there is none I would call if I am sad - maybe because S fullfills my emotional needs or maybe because it is difficult to develop those kinds of bonds once you are out of school. I have also realized I look for people who are fun, sport to do anything, can hold an intellectual conversation and feel there are very few people who fit that - maybe says a lot about the company I keep! I feel I now have less tolerance for people who are not courteous or don't have basic manners - am done putting up with rudeness or childish politics.
Luckily, communication across continents is easier now and I have friends sprinkled around the world from various stages of my life who are just a phone call away and talking to them always leaves me with a warm, fuzzy feeling even if it after six months or a year.

Running in the rain

We had another nice weekend and the best part was Saturday was sort of unplanned. We met Mukul for dinner at this really cool wine bar called Supper - it was the discovery of the day! We had to wait but the brick wall, dimly lit ambiance, excellent wine selection and food that smacked of fresh ingredients made my evening. Plus we had a nice chat with M about his stories of the India trip...potential plans of moving to India...sigh! No one will be left in this city soon. Anyway so after dinner some people were supposed to come over to our house for a drinks and chat session, however, it was lovely spring weather outside so we decided to go to a rooftop bar instead. We waited in line for some time but rain dramatically lowered the value of the rooftop so we ran to another bar - this was my favourite part of the evening - running in the rain!! We were 9 of us so there was utter confusion on where we have to go, umbrellas were in short supply so all of us were literally running in the rain like a bunch of kids enjoying first showers after really hot summer day!! I felt really free and reminded me of Delhi summer when we would go`out and enjoy the first monsoon rain. It was just nice to let go....and the phenomenal weather added to my exhilaration. To many more such evenings!

42 Mile Bike Tour - we did it!!

S and I are a very lazy couple. As a result we are super unfit with our annual exercize limited to running 3.5 miles in the central park for the JP Morgan Challenge every June. So this year when we registered for the 42-mile 5-borough NYC bike tour, I was convinced we are not going to finish it. We had signed up more for fun to see how it goes. We didn't get any time to train somehow and we ended up biking for 2 days before the actual. So you can understand my complete shock when we actually did finish it...in 6 hours including all the rest stops and wait times. We woke up bright and early as the line-up for the tour was supposed to start at 6:30 am. We reached battery park at 7:30 am and though waking up that early on a sunday was a big pain, once there it was exciting to be a part of the big crowd. There was a buzz in the air! We finally started biking at 8:40 am and it was amazing to bike up an absolutely empty 6th avenue, to pass west 4th - an area we frequent often but unrecognizable without traffic at that hour. We had decided that we would stop before the queensborough bridge, however when we reached there neither of us was so tired and we trooped ahead. I think the next decision point came near the Brooklyn Bridge where we again stopped and mulled over if we should stop and go back, however, since the mile marker said only 10 miles left, we decided to finish it. I am not sure if this decision was a good one as it was the toughest 10 miles of the race.

The surprising part was that though we did it with minimal training, my legs didn't hurt as much the next day....maybe am in not such a bad shape after all...