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Damn. This is the nth draft I've discarded. So, how do I start?

Where does one start talking about a friend? Does one begin at the beginning? Or does one start talking about the person? Or why you'd even want to talk about him/her?

I'd begin at the beginning, if there was one. There isn't one specific point in time that I could point out and say, "This is the moment when our paths crossed", or, "this was when we became friends". How do I explain the feeling that I already knew him when we first got in touch? That the very first time we spoke, it was like a conversation with a friend I'd known since my childhood days?

Well. To cut a long story short, he was there in my life one day. Just like that, a chance event. Just like the initial days with my best friend M, I had no idea how my life was about to change forever. Until then, we'd been strangers. And suddenly, there was one less stranger in the world to me, and one more friend in my life.

He reads. A big plus, if you ask me. Plus, he loves PGW. And he even knows who I'm talking about when I mention William Brown. I once told him how I'd woken up in the middle of the night to sit up and laugh at a Wodehouse joke I'd suddenly remembered, and he told me how he could totally relate to it. I found that I usually enjoyed the books he recommended. (I also enjoyed his writing.)

I once had a discussion with him on our musical tastes, as I hadn't been much into English music back then. He was the one who introduced me to rock. He knew what I meant, when I tried to explain that the soppy lyrics of songs from my teenage years no longer held much appeal to me, and suggested a few songs I might enjoy. Boy, did I like them! I got hooked, and went on to explore some more. But for him, I would have missed out on so much. The best part of it all was that I was once more open to new experiences, trying things out before forming my opinions of them.

You know what they say about comfortable silences. I enjoyed them with him. And like with M, conversation just happens. And continues.

He's someone who used to laugh at my lame jokes, and take my teasing in good humour.

He's the only person I've written more than one personalized verse for :)

I could just go on and on forever, but I'd end up doing what he says I do - put him up on a pedestal. I'd rather not do that. (He even managed to laugh when I told him I was reminded of a Woody Allen quote about putting wives under a pedestal rather than on one...)

Anyway, why I started this in the first place was that a conversation I had this morning made me think of him, and as I was seeing things through the rose-tinted vision of Nostalgia, I ended up remembering the great times we used to have.

It's been ages since we were in touch. And that is somehow fitting. Being the people we are, I think this is the best way.

To end with quote from a song I absolutely love, by one of his favourites,

"Someday all the rules will bend,
and you and I will meet again...
...
..., I got a feeling so strong,
maybe someday, our roads will cross"

(I was just thinking of how similar our tastes were, and suddenly realized that we don't support the same football teams... :) )


(This took quite a while to write, as there were many distractions in between, and with Sleep beckoning to me as well. While I was writing this, my friend mentioned a chocolate he was going to have, and as I didn't get one despite my offer that I'd brush my teeth again. That he's in the US, and I'm in India doesn't matter. Anyway, his denying me my chocolate made me lose track of what I was writing, and all that I'd planned to write, some really good lines were there too, got pushed out of my mind. So now you know whom to blame if this post sounds bad, incoherent, insert-negative-adjective-here... Yes, V is the one to blame.)