When I was a teenager, Friendship Day meant sharing of friendship bands and maybe going out with friends and having fun. Now, the friendship bands and going outs may still be around, but the day seem to be celebrated more on social networks than in real.
Since yesterday, the social networks are abuzz with messages celebrating friendship. I heard someone say that the friendship day ought to be celebrated with friends, not with phones and computers.
But in my case, it's my phone and computer that have brought my friends back to me. And I'm loving it!
Till a few years ago, social networking was more a means for youngsters to make new friends. But now, more and more people are joining services like Facebook and WhatsApp to find and re-connect with their long-lost friends.
I lost my friends earlier than usual. Having been forced out of school due to medical complications, I lost the company of school mates. And as I never went to any college, there was never any collgemate either.
Years passed. During that time, had someone asked me about my best friend, I sure would have given a name. But it would have been of someone whom I had not met for years and heard from only on occasions like birthday and Diwali.
But not any more! After a separation of almost two decades, the WhatsApp has brought my schoolmates back to me! And when we reconnected, we are back to being kids. God forbid if the kids of my friends ever manage to read the messages and banter that we share in our group. They would end up wondering about the sanity of their own parents!
But who cares? When you are among your childhood buddies, you have no need to pretend to be grown up. They already know how stupid you are 😀
But meeting old friends also made me realize how mysteriously life travels and makes its own course. Life can choose to make the most gregarious and fun loving girl a doctor in a government hospital fighting with poverty and misery all day long. It can make a shy and reserved girl to turn into a protesting social worker and a globe-trotting adventurer. It can turn a rebel into a loving mother and homemaker. A footballer who used to shy away from chatting with girls is now a sailor and can keep up a witty battle with all the girls of the group together. It can turn a books-hater into a school principal even! And it can turn a school dropout into a novelist and a tech. blogger.
But while so much has changed, it is good to feel that our madness is still the same. We may have become doctors, engineers, social workers, teachers, sailors and so on. But when we get together, we are kids once again. And if you ever see us laughing out loud while staring at a phone screen, you can be sure somebody's leg is getting pulled mercilessly.
But don't you dare interrupt! It's never a good idea to interrupt teenagers. And when we are together, we are all teenagers, not grownups. Recycled teenagers, maybe, but teenagers still.
Here's wishing all my friends a very happy friendship day! And same to those who think that old friends are the best friends 
