Magic or science - Friendship?

How do you explain the science of relationships and how they take hold of you…how do you explain spending one year and being friends for life and spending years together and still staying strangers? 

A groups of friends, we called ourselves SVADPAL. That like you must have guessed stood for the first letter of each of our names (we were freshly minted college-goers!). We were a group of seven girls, we spent one year together and since then have met every year all thanks to the one ‘S’. But every time we meet it’s like nothing has changed…all the years, the families, the responsibilities, the maturity…all fall away.

Today was one such day. Not all seven of us could meet cause many of us are spread across and don’t all live in the same city, but three of us caught up to celebrate ‘L’s birthday. From the moment we met till the time we bid our goodbyes we laughed and laughed and laughed, like we hadn’t laughed for many years. 

What is it about college friends that let you be who you are? No pretenses, no half-truths and whole lies, just plain you. There is nothing you can’t tell each other, there is nothing that is taboo. We don’t judge we don’t dwell, we laugh at our travails and take inspiration from each of our life’s paths. Our follies, our adventures and misadventures…all just fodder for more togetherness…from stomach grasping laughter to bawling and then laughter again…all emotions visited in the span of a few minutes and even seconds.   

We were a group of seven that nobody messed with. We bunked classes, we got into fights with everybody else, we consoled each other, we got thrown out of classes and suspended, we dated and laughed at each other’s boyfriends…we did it all. Today after many years, it is all the same, we still laugh at husbands and kids and the many complexities that that brings with it. We walk out and even the boys react the same! We are different people, but time stays suspended when we spend time with each other…how does this work really? 

What is that source of truth that such relationships feed on? What is that magic that gets created when you are least expecting it? How can 200 days or thereabouts spent together mean so much more than several decades spent with others?

Whatever the magic or the science behind this is…I am thankful and grateful for such relationships. Life has so much more meaning cause of these bonds that exist. Life is richer, more fuller somehow.  And I wish that every one of you has such experiences in life and is blessed with something like this.

I’m listening in, if you’d like to share…