The Friends Scavengers

I can choose my friends no longer.

In many ways, FB is a blessing. I am connected to most of my Masters batchmates and seniors & juniors, thanks to which I know how old their kids are, the international vacations they took, the re-unions they had with their families, what they thought of the latest flick in town, whether they think Rafa owns Fed, ....... and vice-versa. I've also reconnected with zillions of school friends on FB - almost all of who I had lost touch with, thanks to the lets-pretend-school-never-happened phase that all of us go through (I have been in regular touch with precisely four friends from school over the years - and this is a much better number than most!).

But what do I do when a random colleague from work (as opposed to a work-friend) sends me a request on FB? Or when the guy I've just been introduced to over lunch wants to be friends on FB (and leaves a comment on my pictures just 5 minutes after I accept his virtual hand of friendship - I shuda followed my instinct to ignore his request!). Can I be friends with my ex-ed on FB while not being friends with them in 'real' life? And how do I react when someone from my team wants to be my friend on FB? Just stay away from the website, I guess.

Not surprisingly perhaps, this is not just limited to personal networking sites. At work, I have been occasionally pursued for 'friendship' by co-workers who I have bumped into at a cafe or a restaurant, or who have 'discovered' my profile on the intranet. These un-gentlemen then make it a habit of pinging me every day, refuse to catch subtle and not so subtle hints to bugger off, till I have to finally tell them in no uncertain terms to clear off or else...

Time was when we were choosy about who could be called a friend, a close friend or a best friend. Friendships would be forged over shared moments of laughter, madness, tears, bitching, pranks, music, books, nite-outs and drunken driving. A friend was not the cheap commodity it has turned into today. Good friendships were hewn over years, often over decades (I just realized that K, S, A & I have known each other for two years short of two decades, whoa!).

Have we turned into such a lonely people that our social quotient is measured by the size of our 'friends network' on FB or Twitter?

Just another day

Chopin. Polonaise. Mazurka. Etude. Prelude. Waltz. the Funeral March. And the Fantaisie Impromptu.

Eliot. Love songs. Lost city. The yellow fog that curled once more about the house. Souls etherized against the sky. Measuring life with coffee spoons. Coversations that slip between velleities & carefully caught regrets, attenuated tones of violins mingled with remote cornets. Lilacs. Hyacinths. The drinking of tea. Preludes. A heap of broken images, fear in a handful of dust. HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME. Tirisuis. The third who always walks beside you. Hypocrite lecteur. Datta, Dayadhvam, Damyata.

A rocking chair.

Neruda. I can sing the saddest lines tonight. Isla Negra. Slowly dies who. Something of yesterday clings to today. The spans of cements, two breasts, two abysses...held by the concrete calligraphy that writes on the page of the river.

Seth, too. All you who sleep tonight. The Room & the Street. A kind of loving. Unstated intentions. Plums. Red suitcases. A helve of dares, a loaf of shoulds. Sit, drink your coffee. Chinese sunsets. Perhaps, this could have stayed unstated...

And maybe, just maybe, The Who. Run, run, run. A quick one.

A touch of spring.