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.