14 January 2012
Missing vs. Missing in Action
It has been one of those excruciatingly long weeks. Luckily, I had the presence (albeit virtual) of one friend who is adept at making me laugh in the face of frustration. I was glad to have him on hand–even if he does get the biggest kick out of it when I growl or scowl. Some people chase their friends down day after day (the ones who find themselves missing their friends) while others seem to run away (the ones who are regularly missing in action, instead)… The former type of friend is time consuming but quite lovely to know. Actually, I need to clarify my word choice above, because ‘chase’ suggests that I am the one running away from or after people. LOL I make myself available to the people I like and let them find me if they are looking. Some look and others don’t. Thank God. If all of my friends decided to chat with me every single day, I think my head would explode. There are a few people whom I wish were in more frequent contact, but they are few in number. (Arrey! I just had an awful thought! When I am rushing and suddenly notice a friend on-line, I will send a quick, silly message or greeting to them before I log out. I hope they don’t think I chat-and-run just to avoid them. I should ask, I guess. Hai na?)
It is a very nice feeling to know that someone just cannot imagine starting their days without at least a quick check-in to say, ‘Hi. I am thinking of you. I love you. Your laugh makes my day.’ While my husband is the one person I have to have, some of my friends certainly make my days brighter. I look forward to those chats now: text chats, voice chats, video chats, cam plus text, whatever. I am also building a collection of photographs (unsolicited but so welcome) that link me to the lives of my friends, their loved ones, their jobs. By the time I visit India, I will be able to recognise nieces and nephews and girlfriends…
I must say, that there are people I am finding myself thankful for in profound ways. There are certain days of the week that I know I will get to spend hours with one of the dearest, sweetest people I know. There are days when I know I will get to wish another friend ‘sweet dreams’ and then wish him well as he begins his day anew. There are days when I am scheduled to meet my guru and know that my brain will be aching at the end from information overload–but my stomach will also be aching from laughter then, too. These days are ones I look forward to from the moment one call is ended until the next is begun. Meetings in between are bonuses. 
These are friends who know that a ‘busy’ status in G-Mail is not meant for them–and vice versa. I am going to have to strike a deal with one friend when he wakes up today, though. If I stay on-line with him for hours, he is going to have to help me study instead of side-tracking me with whatever new thing he comes up with.
I had the nicest surprise recently. One of my friends shocked me by initiating our first voice chat–after something like 5 months of e-mailing, text chatting, and cam. When the video chat request came through, I expected that we would have cams only. When I heard my friend’s voice, I was too thrilled and happy to even begin to express it. I am sure the expression on my face was priceless, and I probably lit up like a lamp. We do not get to chat very often anymore, but this is one of those friends who very quickly nested deeply in my heart. Being able to finally match a voice to him was a precious gift. I had to laugh afterward, however. He asked me to speak Hindi to him and I got embarrassed. All I could say at first was, ‘I am shy! I can’t; I don’t know what to say.’ Of course, being in the grips of some of the worst performance anxiety EVER, I was also a mumbling mess. I did not realise it until later, but he thought my ‘I am shy’ was a mangled attempt at ‘Namaste’. O-kay, now I am not only incredibly shy but now I feel unbelievably stupid. Who in the world cannot pronounce ‘Namaste’? OMG… Now I will never EVER be able to talk to him in Hindi, much less Gujarati! LOL
My degree of comfort in speaking Hindi varies from friend to friend. I do not know why. They are all so supportive of my occasionally hilarious attempts to communicate. They often laugh at me when I talk to them in Hindi, not in a bad way, but simply from delight. I say, ‘Accha laga!’ to some outrageous statement or another and then just wait for the rolling laughter before the response, ‘Mujhe bhi accha laga.’ Of course, I am the same when they pick up slang from me and repeat it days later; I cannot help but laugh then, too. One friend calls me his koyal because of how he makes me laugh. Then I tease him because a koyal is a cuckoo–which can be synonymous with ‘crazy’ in the U.S. That’s alright. I am crazy.
I am certainly crazy about my friends. I am surprised and happy that my oh-so-shy husband is even making friends with one or two of them. He has been claimed as bara bhai by one, so I guess that makes me bhabhi-ji. LOL Jason felt so honoured by this that he celebrated by trying his chota bhai’s favourite dish the next time we had Indian food. I have the best husband ever! To be able to add all of my friends to my blessings makes me the luckiest person on the face of the earth. (!!!!)
