Rebuilding a Friendship

Life sometimes has an odd way of pushing you into doing things you don’t want to do, and then throw a pleasant surprise at you. I got in touch with a long forgotten friend after a gap of nearly four years thanks to one such reluctant act.

Last Saturday one of my bosses asked me to attend an official meeting at a far away place. It was a holiday for us on Saturday and I was loath to attend it. I tried to wriggle out of it putting on a long face and muttering darkly about having to forego a holiday. My boss said, “Nothing doing’ when I told him I wasn’t inclined to go as I was in no way connected with the meeting.

To make sure I attended he gave me a memo, the ultimate weapon in the bureaucracy. So I had no alternative but to fall in line. The meeting was at a far away place and we had to leave early in the morning. I had my own ideas about the meeting and prepared for it the previous day picking up a book I could read. I thought of sitting in a corner with it and whiling away the time reading.

It didn’t work out like that since the meeting hall was small and every one could see every one. There were people from all over the country attending the meeting. I asked the people from Karnataka if they knew a certain officer I knew and told them I wanted his telephone number.

In 2000 I was in Chennai for ten days to attend a training session. I was put in a room along with an officer from Karnataka and during those ten days we became good friends though he was ten or fifteen years older than me. We kept in touch until 2005 and the link was broken because I lost his telephone number, and he too did not call.

On Saturday the officer from Karnataka had told me my friend had opted for voluntary retirement and promised to give me his number after returning to Bangalore. Yesterday when I called, he gave my friend’s number promptly as promised. I was excited

I dialed my friend’s number and waited with bated breath for Amarnath to lift the phone. Finally he came on line and asked something in Kannada. When I told him I was calling from Hyderabad, he was silent for some time and then he spoke. We chatted for some time and he asked me to come to Bangalore. I was glad I finally got in touch with a good friend and thanked my stars for agreeing to attend that meeting, though with great reluctance.