Dearest childhood friends...

Another ordinary day, another ordinary routine of checking my mails when suddenly I spied upon a mail, amidst all the spams that had clogged my mailbox recently, from a very dear friend of mine. And what good news it held! Congratulations Ong! I wish I could be there in person to tell you this and give you my warmest hug! But since I am stuck here and without any superpowers to magically transport me back home, I could only do this. But I do it with the utmost sincerity and with all my heart. Hugs and kisses.



My childhood friends, all grown up and are no longer the girls I remember them as. Sure they are still the same persons that I had known them as but life experiences and time had changed them subtly and not so subtly. We had grown apart through distance, with everybody in different places now but we had kept in touch through the years, quite remarkably, if I may say so given that I had known some of these girls since I was a baby!



I planned the London-Munich trip, in part to see the places and also for another, more important reason, which was to see my friends again. I had gone home for Christmas for the past two years now and I had met up with the rest back home. I had not seen these three girls in years and was missing out on quite a bit of their lives. Emails and Facebook (!) can only do so much and nothing can quite replace the joy of seeing them in person. I remembered when Radhi and Raghu came to visit Kyoto last year and how much I had been looking forward to seeing her!



When you are apart for so long, you tend to be apprehensive when the reunion happens. The biggest fear is that, when you had finished catching up on each other's lives, will there be prolonged moments of silence when each is trying to rack her brains to figure out something to say to the other? Will the flow of the conversation be interrupted by those uncomfortable moments? Will you find yourself trying to escape those awkward times?



But all those thoughts just went flying away when I first saw each of them at the train stations. The first hug after so many years felt so good. I did not realised how much I had missed them, their company and their friendship, until I had seen them again. We had so much fun, reminiscing about the good ol' days, erupting in roaring laughters that scared poor Marvin into tears. Ah guys, it was truly a great time! My only wish was that the rest of us could have been there too.



Hopefully, I will be going home for this Christmas. And meeting up with all of you guys again back home for Sha's wedding! Till then, take care! Lots of hugs, kisses and love.