Offline friendships

It is astonishing to see how needs of individuals vary. Friends are often on our chat list. If chatting is blocked at work, e-mail works. Add to it the orkut, linkedin, facebook and twitter. But do we really connect to people we chat online, I ask myself. Sometimes, we do. The fact is we can’t do without Internet and therefore have to resort to these online media to serve our purpose to remain connected to our dear ones. It is another topic that we have ‘dear ones’ in 1000s which in itself is inexplicable, I feel. So, I tend to find my online reach sometime exhaustive but also, hollow. I realize that people I chat with don’t connect in most cases. The communication actually dies down with time. Only our web presence remains.

Now when I look back a few years from now, I made friends who were not at all connected to Cyber Space. The reason: they were public servants with the Ministry of Home Affairs. Today I fondly remember Rakesh and Charan. Both came from different places (former – Alwar, latter – Dehradun) and got job at the same place and they decided to stay together, as we do during our first job outside our home city. They used to stay in my locality. Metro Rail, then, was still under construction so had to depend on the buses that used to start from our residential area. Every day travel connected me with them. It was a genuine relationship of belonging to a bus, locality and sharing a journey. Political discussions, music and a lot of Mirza Ghalib ghazals were our pass time. National daily ‘Hindu’ nurtured our day-to-day knowledge and understanding. I-pod was not there so Radio FM in our mobiles played a key bonding role, where we individually checked for the station playing the best song as per our likings. I fondly recall even today that Rakesh used to offer us gyaan about language – especially Urdu & Hindi, cultural changes the country is going through, civilization, what not… for having developed interests on these subjects and his consistent readings. I owe my understanding of little Urdu and liking for this language to him.

A few sessions of having tea near a roadside stall during monsoon drizzle during holidays ensured we enjoyed simplistic pleasure. Before going for a cup of tea, they would even tease me with hygiene issues as they knew I go to five star hotels for attending conferences and meetings. There used to be innumerous arguments on various subjects followed by thoughtful discussions. All are now just fond memories.

As time passed, both (little elder to me) of them got married and now nurturing their respective kids. They are no longer in Delhi. Rakesh stays at Jaipur and Charan in Dehradun as they asked for local postings. Both own flats in my colony compound. And therefore, there is a hope that they would return. We speak once in a blue moon and collectively, miss dearly the bygone days. Interestingly, I never missed them online. Not even today. They are still living perfectly in an age of cyber boom without a status of online presence. I feel they are far happier and self-contented than me by not getting caught in the jungle of information. They don’t feel any void of missing the virtual world as they live in the real one. I am happy that I am still connected with them, real-ly, and somewhere with the real world too.