“Don't you wish you could take a single childhood memory and blow it up into a bubble and live inside it forever?” -  Sarah Addison Allen

Childhood friends, acquaintances and other fond memories remain forever. However, we now live in jet age where life runs at breakneck speed. With age we tend to forget many things but certain thinks are indelibly etched in our mind which never erased. The emotion and zeal with which we used to make friends oblivious of ground reality do sometimes ruin our life, yet the friends at large are the greatest gift of life. Friendship teaches us to understand each other, to appreciate each other’s problems. Friends stand like a rock on which one can rest assured in the time of trouble. Count your life not by number of years you live but by number of meaningful friendship you developed. That’s the real life.

We do forget many childhood friends due to various reasons like absence of proper communication, Diaspora or other unforeseen reasons. Now, at this age, when speedy communications are in place we come across many old friends through various social media platforms. We find they are aged, they lead different type of life which was unknown to us in older days, and someone still remains what he was in the past. Someone became rich, someone struggle to manage both ends meet. We come to know their timeline. We stare with awe when we find some of our friends struggled so hard in this intervening period and at the same time we find some friend flourished in life like anything. Somebody developed ego and deceit, while somebody still remain diffident and humble. All we consider practical and just during the arduous journey of life. We find so many people still can’t express their difficulty even though they used to narrate everything innocently in their childhood days. At times it appears that some friends are having some iota of doubt in their mind and they get confused what to tell and what not to tell.

We used to notice some friends used to attract their opposite sex and tried to taste romance. That time it was considered as social evil in many families. They used to do it surreptitiously. They behaved like coy creatures with an intention to go unnoticed. At times we used to find they were qualm and at times used to suffer from anxiety. Still there was a pleasant excitement of such adventure. Many cases we found the relationship culminated into life partnership. In some case we found heart breakage. All such cases were mainly due to the fact that innocent brain and less maturity failed to access the ground reality. Still there was life in it. Nowadays we have become more practical and materialistic. Divorce is the order of the day. We forgot to supplement each other’s weakness, we forgot to make adjustment and we too forgot to leave a single inch of independence by sacrifice a little to honour the relationship. We are more matured and intelligent now, thanks to the Global Village we live in, but we don’t accept that time is a great healer. We forget we have children who will lose their identity. We are more interested in our own path. We build walls and forget to make a door, we make canals and we forget to make bridges. It is very difficult for us to imagine how abruptly people severe relationship with a stroke of signature in legal paper. We make tiny worlds within our own world. Each tiny world is separated by inaccessible stubborn and obstinate walls of deceit.

We used to have friends who were taciturn and reticent. They used to display ephemeral interest in fairer sex but   did not have courage, bravery or you may call valour to make their wish fructify. Sometimes such intention became obvious from both ends but due to the same reasons like family interdiction etc could not materialize. In later days, in the days of social networking era, their virtual meeting becomes diffident and hesitant. Both ends try to explore how they are leading their conjugal life. They at times reveal inadvertently their remorse and contrition in a flash. Their sweet friendship appears resuscitated but they lead their normal life with the fond memoirs of the past without having any jolt to their respective families. They keep in their mind the friend of the past as the most valuable antique. They respect their friendship as a sweet responsibility, not as an opportunity.

We come across such instances in today’s world though social networking platforms. We cherish the old friendship even at our twilight of life. All have to discharge their family and social responsibilities. Hence, most of the times, we engross ourselves with the present and contemplating the future. The loneliness at times take us for a ride in the Time Machine to visit the past, to feel the past through the glass door of contentment, gratification and divine satisfaction. The trail of fond memories last longer, may be beyond death. We must understand we have nothing that is really our own, we hold everything as a loan.