Going Gaga over friendships.

This post is dedicated to my good friend N, from Relections ( her humourous ways of accounting day to day happenings will keep you hooked to her writing for sure) - It is her gentle reprimand ( BTW, you want to call that gentle? I literally can see her hands on hips and nose in the air, saying that comment, especially the words huh, huh) that made me come up with this post. If you want to read that comment you will have to go here and read the last comment there by N.

But Nancy, you will not know what difference that comment made to me. I felt so good that there was one soul who wanted me to write. And you know what? this comment came when I was physically and emotionally down. A simple ear problem, that led me to the ENT Surgeon, who with all her gentleness tried putting the scalpel, forceps, water jet and suction in and out of my ear to clear my ear problem – can you believe I had to go for four sittings to get all the damn ear wax cleared. The only other option was to surgically remove it under General anesthesia, which was not an option. Two weeks of pain, anxiety and horror ( due to the pain), and immediately a bout of Viral fever for a week and then a relapse of the same Viral after a week. I started speaking about my funeral plans with Joe, who thought I lost my mind. The large doses of painkillers and antibiotics was giving me Insomnia, making me feel creepy in the nights. Ok these are all not excuses, but it was during such a time, I got this comment and now, it is as though I have gotten well all of a sudden. So Nancy, this post as I said is a tribute to your prodding .:-)

Then there was Rekha, from Balancing Act, We have been interacting over the comment section of our blogs, I was so drawn to some of her intense poems and there we were exchanging mail ids, writing to each other and Rekha gave me her number.  I wanted to surprise her and called her on the pretext of offering her a bank loan or something like that and she was a smart one, somehow figured out it was me and we hit it off, like a house on fire. There were so many coincidences in our life, at one point it was getting too hard for both of us to believe. My best memories of Kerala and hers were from almost the same place, we were in sync with each other on many other stuff, and we were talking to each other as if we had known each other for a long time. That warm fuzzy feeling of a good friend comes to me whenever I think of Rekha. Feel lucky to have found you, Rekha dear.

Since I am celebrating my friends, I cannot miss out on a stalwart, who is close to my heart. Ramesh from Business Musings, is a great thinker, with business insights that goes beyond my comprehension, and I truly admire him for what he is. I cannot even fathom the depth of his knowledge in the business world. Such an imminent person, never misses to comment on my blog every time I put up a post, however irrelevant or silly. Ramesh, I did ask for your picture once and immediately after posting the comment in your blog, I googled and got you. Now I have a face to your name. Thank you Ramesh for being you. :-)

Dan is one of my long time friends from the first organisation I started my career in. We lost touch in between and got back to each other after an interval of some 6 – 7 years. He calls me regularly, atleast once a week and most often than not, he is the caller and a shameless woman that I am, never return his calls, in case I miss them. Dan would call me again after a few days, and start the call with a couple of cuss words and I allow him to pour his heart out… The last one and half months there were countless calls of his that I missed, that he really was worried. Once he messaged me saying why the hell don’t you atleast message me back and say if all is well? I am truly blessed to have him as a friend and I know I can depend on as the saying goes – a friend in need is a friend indeed. I truly wish I can be a good friend to him, just the way he is to me. He is in the UK for a few weeks now and wanted to pass on the message to me, since he may not call me from there and I as usual, was not picking his calls, and he messaged me that he is travelled that weekend. The next day he promptly called me and asked me if I had got the message and also told there is no point in talking to me about phone etiquettes. I know I take him for granted, don’t we all take the ones who are really close to us that way?

How can I miss out on Petula – she is my pillar of support. Couldn’t answer many of her calls that she dropped in home one of the days to check in on me. It was a working day and I was getting ready to go to office, that she ended up making breakfast for me. Pets has always been on the plumpier side and had a bone of contention that I am thinner than her. She came in and looked at me and said “Woman, you got to eat well and have some flesh around you, to make yourself strong like me. It does not pay well to look slim and thin” inbetween bouts of laughter and ended it with a wink. Love her for being the mother hen to me even today. :-)

As I put this down here, I feel blessed to have these wonderful people in my life – Nothing wrong in going GaGa over them. Don’t you agree?