The last 3 years of my school life at 'CNS' was perhaps the most exciting period of my life. Now when I look into it, the happiest too. It was the time when I finally started to make friends. Much different from the earlier times when friendship was result of sharing side-by-side seats or hailing from the same location. It was also the time when make-ups and break-ups started to happen. I had my fair share of both perhaps the latter being more pre-dominant.

During this Christmas, I had the chance to meet my oldest and in my words - the "Golden group" of friends. Close to 4 years have past since our parting. Yes there have been phone calls in between. Msgs and email sent and received to fill the gaps created by time. But in matter of friendship, nothing enough, not even close to live up to the legend left by our friendship in the first place. But when we finally meet, time and space seem to melt away as if it has been an illusion all along. Everyone has changed but somehow they all seem to be the same for each other. Nowadays if someones says 'I missed you', the first thing that comes to my mind is doubt. A question mark at his/her sincerity of the statement. I almost always reply with a grunt implying that such exhibition of love and friendship is beyond me. But this was a meeting where such generous show of affection looked very natural and only seem to warrant a reply of the same nature. Nothing seemed out of context.

After years of following Ayn Rand and her interesting look at relations, I have learned to be indifferent. But this is one group of people with whom I can be anything but indifferent. No matter how intelligent you think or how rationally you put it, I still get hope from their friendship.I can still feel the pangs of pain when something goes wrong and the joy of life when a phone call comes from them. The saying that "Love is not a choice, it just happens" is very true.

In 4 years of engineering, I have perhaps seen 10 times as many people as before. Talked and made acquaintance with such a lot of people. But there are so few among them that I can really call friends. Yes there are those who have breached my fortress of indifference to find place among the golden group of friends but the numbers speak for themselves. This is a new era much different from the older one. Here a more practical outlook and slightly grown-up intelligence have resulted in more acquaintances and less friends.

Friendship is like a beautiful and vintage bottle of wine. The older it goes, the better it becomes. It is also a very intoxicating drink. Here you can drown all your sorrows and celebrate all your joys.

Back to being practical, I dont think life is going to go this way. Things change. New people come into our lives and old ones depart. Even the ones we believe in may not always remain.But thats the rule of life "In love and friendship we can only give. Then you just wait with open arms to recieve whatever is thrown at your way"

It is a revolting idea. How could this day be any important than any other day? In matter of time, date and place, it has no specialty. The earth revolves around the sun which means there is no single point of beginning. Thus this day could have been any other day. Yet this day stands on top of all others. One could argue that this is the mother of all days.

I remember talking to a friend of mine yesterday about how new year was a commercial invention. If that is the case, then it is perhaps the greatest marketing affair of all times. My friend was put down by my apparent lukewarm reaction to her 3 hour early new year wishing. But the truth is that I was in no mood to celebrate this day. New year is suppose to bring something new to life. It is suppose to be the day when we can start life anew, forgetting past mistakes. But somehow I didn't want this. I wanted it to pass without affecting me. Maybe years of making resolutions and breaking them has finally taken the toll on my spirits.

But somehow I couldn sleep. Needless to say, the hour long session of bursting crackers by my hostel inmates didn help. Thus I found myself wandering the familiar territory of hope for a new year. I was skeptical !! How could you not be? But the truth is it is better to hope and fail rather than letting it go. In reality I am still the confused soul. The midnight chimes have done no alteration. But somehow it just feels good :)