With Amit Trivedi singing "zinda hun main, kaafi hai" in the background, I sit to write down this blog post. For the past few days, I have been thinking often that I should write something - but could not think of anything I wanted to write about. It is important, however, that I write something. Over the past few months of creating lots of presentations that use english without adjectives or articles, I have seen my writing skills move down a few notches. In any case, I am gradually accepting the fact that my verbal skills are mediocre at best (thanking Aparna for that realisation), so I should make an effort to save whatever is left of this rickety mess.

I do have much to write about, and I find it amazing that the melancholy thinker within me has not revolted till now. Perhaps I was rushing through life, through my career, to notice how rapidly things around me were changing. Over the last few months, my friends have moved away from Delhi; now the situation is such that I could count my friends in Delhi on the fingers of one hand. At the time that they were moving away, I was having fun at work, so I did not quite realise it. Now that the workload is somewhat off my shoulders, I sense how much things have changed. Delhi is not nearly the same as it was. It is a less warm, less interesting and less lively place.

To be fair, one can always make new friends, but I feel a certain inertia. The memories of my friendships past weigh heavily in my mind. I remember how much we went through together - the first few meetings, the awkwardness, the opening up, the arguments, the patch-up, all of it. Now, to think that to make such close friends again, I will have to go through that entire cycle again is quite intimidating. I am not sure if I have the energy for that. At college, I had time, I had hope, I was less constrained by life; all of these are no longer true.

But then I turn back the clock a little and remember the years immediately before college. I stayed at DSOI, Dhaula Kuan, all by my own. I had friends only at school, and was completely lonely when I came back to that room after school. Looking back, there are two things that I learn:

• I have been lonely before. Rather, the natural state in my life has been loneliness; the last few years of a colourful social life was an aberration. It is a state that I feel comfortable in, that I thrive in. For example, I have been taking good care of my health this past week, have been cooking and have been planning my days out. I feel this silence enables me to work much, much better.

• It was my one year of complete loneliness that taught me the value of having someone in my life. Then, when I went to college, I was clear about the fact that my career progression was secondary to making friends, and that has helped me immensely in both aspects. It made me human, gave me the ability to feel people's emotions and  to give and take a lot of love. I would not be harsh on myself by saying that I have forgotten that over the last couple of years; but yes, I can do (and have done) this better in the past. 

Of course, it is not over. The relationships I have formed will last a life time, even the ones that are not temporarily going well. As I once explained to a friend, we might bicker right now, but in the future, when we would move into newer circumstances, the sight of a familiar face will be most comforting. At the same time, these 'close' relationships will never be the same again. There will be competing forces that will chip away at these relationships and erode them over time.

As I look forward to the next few months in India before I leave for Oxford in September, the only feeling I experience is one of gratitude. Gratitude towards those people who came in my life - those who I loved, those who loved me, those who competed with me, those who broke my heart, those who criticised me and those who disliked me. Each one of them have taught me something, least of all the ability to feel emotions. I want to make the next few months work. Work for me, and work for those who I know I will always miss.