Now we need them more often.
A meet with friends from four decades back - how could I say NO. They had their first meeting on the day we went to Kashmir. And this was our second meet on 30th May 2023. All these people from my native place where I did my primary education and then moved on as my father had a transferable job. I returned after a decade, to do my graduation there and have been in touch with some of these friends. But then recently they started searching for all of our friends and created a whatsapp group - UP School to High School. The number grew slowly and now we have 52 members. The first meet was an invite all and there were more members than this one, including girls. This was a boys only celebration, and most of us showed up. In fact I went the previous night so that I could sleep well and join them in the morning. Me and my best friend planned to go together and he suddenly got some work which made delays. Believe me, the phone was scary all the time - there was a call every five minutes from someone scolding us to arrive as soon as possible. They have full rights to say anything :)
Look at the excitements.
The only starter of the day - fried and served hot with salad.
Last time they had arranged a cook but this time they decided to cook on our own - the chief cook being one of us having some mastery. There were not much items so this made sense and more fun. Apart from this starter and salad, they had only rice and mutton.
And the mutton was mind blowing - perfectly cooked to not need anything else. A funny thing that I observed that every time they wanted to add some more water while cooking the mutton, they would put the water on the cover plate of that container. And once that would be hot they would slide that inside - because they wanted hot water :) Cold water would spoil the taste - fun, isn't it ?
Food was ready in time - by early 2'o clock and served by few of us.
The person who arrived last - he is fined now to sponsor half the next event or 10k whichever is higher.
After the lunch we wrapped up and took some group photo.
It was almost impossible to take a perfect photo so we took several. Some of them may look similar, but then if you watch closely you can see someone expressing something looking at somewhere else. Can you find me ?
After everything was over a very few started leaving the place, but most of them stayed back and one more hour of stress free shouts - don't you think, we are missing that in this digital life ? WE barely speak loud happily - if you have ever done that, then you know how much stress it burns. And one other thing was missing - a music system that would have increased the excitements. Some still tried to do a reel using a phone. Overall a great day spent with commitment to meet soon - possibly next month. Here is a full video of all photos and few videos - I am sure you will feel the excitement from the videos.
And did you notice the place ? I mean how could we do this in hot summer ? Because this is backward of a temple having lot of trees and at a very open area. We didn't feel the heat at all. The only reason we did on the backwards was that it was a non-veg meal. But let me show you the beautiful ambience of the temple.
You can easily spend the entire day here without feeling the pinch.
As we grow older, we need more socialization, unlike the isolated life that we are living in this busy schedule. I have seen my father - his current situation is only because of not having any friends to speak and discuss. He used to go to a place every day to meet them, sit for couple of hours, talk, laugh.....but Covid took most of them and life has changed for him. After we reach a certain age, your education or job or financial status won't matter at all - all you need is some real good friends with whom you can share your feelings every day.
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