Living an Antisocial Life

You don’t really realize the true worth of good friends until you don’t have easy access to them anymore. Generally, we take our friends for granted; I used the term because that’s how I think we render them. We know if they are mad at us, a surprise visit to their home will fix it. If we haven’t met them in months, we know one weekend or even at a scheduled hour, we can catch up with them. We know we can give them a call anytime and blare our hearts out. We might not even meet them for months or at times even years, but we know whenever we will meet them, things will pick up from right where we left them. You can do all the buraiyan, gossips, and zanana mashwaray with them. You can totally check out the guys despite your marital status and kids crying in your lap along with making fun of the makeup of the aunty sitting behind you while your own face looks like a burnt chapatti.

I am by default an anti-social person. When I say anti-social, I mean I don’t like meeting new people in person especially when the person is question has no direct link to me. I am good at making conversations with strangers, with the “bhabis” who are Mr’s friends’ wives, with aunties who are again Mr’s friends’ mummies, with our neighbours who all belong to different countries with not a single common string between us other than the fact that we live in the same building, with my colleagues at work and the awesome ladies who I visit for my waxing and face denting painting solutions. BUT I cannot, simply cannot call anyone of them my friends. I have to make nice little conversations with them because I have to. It’s more like a social obligation because I don’t want to come off as a rude person. If I will spot any one of them in a mall or at the grocery store, I would prefer changing my path as I don’t know what I will say to them in a setting which is out of the box of our regular meeting situations. It just makes me very uncomfortable though I might be coming off as a rude ass but sadly that is who I am.

It has been almost two years I have moved to a new country; a country I am still struggling to find a right space in, get comfortable in and call my home. Maybe I am just a dumb person for not enjoying the moment; thinking too much about the past and fretting too much about the future while missing out totally the present. In a wind whirl life which I live here, a few people I miss the most are my friends. Though I am bad at making new friends, the set of friends I have is based on people with whom I have spent a lot of time. I have some amazing friends from when I was in school, most of them married now, some single, some with multiple kids. It was amazing when we could catch up every month, sit and talk about all the rishta crap, fret about our own shadian, do buraian of even each other! I just miss those times so bad! Then I have some amazing people in my life whom I befriended in university. God the amazing and crazy times we have shared! It was two amazing years and a lifetime of friendship I earned with those super amazing human beings. My last set of friends pops from my workplace. I just adore those girls and though I haven’t caught up in the longest time with them, I know I will always love them bad!

Probably you can assume from my whining session how much I miss my friends. It was not that I was meeting them every day back at home provided I had the busiest work routine back then, but at least I had easy access to most of them. Now the time difference alone messes up everything. When you are free, you know they won’t be, and when they are free, you are in the sleep-land trying to fight off those pesky rishtaydaar of yours in your sleep. And when you are an antisocial creep like me, you end up being all alone when you move to a new place. There are times when I get frustrated seeing others hanging out together, bunch of desi women hopping on and off from buses, busy chatting away or having a date at the coffee shops; but the fault lies in me entirely. I need to be more social and at least try to keep up with the people I know. Till then, I miss you bad my good old friends! You know who you guys are! Much love :*