A couple of days back, I met a colleague from my first job. I was meeting S after a couple of decades and was apprehensive whether we would recognise each other. I rescheduled my day, advancing a few meetings to the early part of the day, in order to meet him at the airport. I arrived at the airport a few minutes before his plane landed and he took a while to collect his baggage and exit the airport. I seated myself near the arrivals, taking frequent breaks from the book that I was (am still) reading, to look around, in case he had exited and I missed him. My memory of S was of him being one of the most dapper guys at work and I instinctively began looking for someone similar from among the people who were walking out of the arrival gates.
When I first met S, I had just finished my education - wet behind the ears, so to say. He was a few years older, having qualified himself a little more. Looking back, I would thoroughly disapprove of the person I was: brash, aggressive, immature and ruthlessly ambitious. I sure have come a long, long way from there: very measured and guarded in my ways - a stickler for propriety, calmer, certainly quite mature- more mature than I was, and the ambition factor has shifted from the self to the other/s. He and I hadn’t spoken since I made the move from my first job. But networking possibilities of today helped us reconnect as a group of batchmates from our first job. Yet, we hadn’t exchanged any personal notes except for the sundry, rather impersonal, wishes on birthdays. And since both of us are now pretty much reclusive on social media, we barely knew what we looked like at present.
Cut to the airport: I must have appeared rather strange, what with the way I was staring at every gentleman who strode out, trying to gauge if he were the person I had come to meet. I suddenly noticed a rather short gentleman waving furiously in my direction. No, I didn’t make a dash towards him like it happens in the movies! I stared and wondered if time could have shrunk the tall guy I remembered S as being. Turned out that the gentleman had a slight squint in his vision, which explained his looking unintentionally at me. Thankfully, the man walked past me before I had the chance to embarrass myself!
And then I saw a family of four arrive - a mixed gender couple and their two children. They were received by the lady’s father, a bouquet in hand et al. After the customary hugs, the father walked away with his daughter and grandchildren completely oblivious to the existence of the man who happened to be his son-in-law, who, rather ruefully, pushed the trolly that held a pile of suitcases.
I suddenly heard my phone beep and it drew my attention away from the scenes at the airport which, by then, I had used to keep myself amused. “At Chai Point”, the message read. I turned and found him there, smiling, and still as dapper, but (I guess) in doubt if I were indeed the Shobha he knew from the many years back.
Like most similar meetings, this, too, was a unique experience. Our topographies had changed, but we were a lot more mature. Suddenly there was so much to talk about…so much sense at that - our perception of life, individual experiences, personal losses and aspirations for a healthier and more peaceful future for ourselves and those that we love… And all the apprehensions from a few minutes ago vanished in the ether that surrounded us. Two hours, Upma-chutney and filter coffee later, the bridge was built. Today I met him, as if for the first time…again. It’s moments like this that enliven the journey of life, the destination just fading in relation.
It was ‘yesterday’, once more…
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