High School Friends

My friends list on Orkut keeps on growing thanks to the continuous flow of newly found old friends!  There are those who I used to hang out with, those who I played sports with, and those I used to have in classes. 

It’s interesting to see who my friends from over a decade and a half have become and what they are doing now.  Some of them have done well for themselves.  Many of them are married and an equal number are divorced.  A large number of them seem to be just floating around though, perhaps somewhat like me at the moment.  Many of them have kids and talk about them frequently (they’re the moms!).  A few of them are highly religious.  One of them turned out to be gay, signs of which existed back then.  A girl I had a crush on (she was the cutest thing) now has 5 children.  She’s the newest addition so I don’t know much else about her.

Another common thing among the high school gang is that most of them have stayed near home.  A few of them have moved to nearby cities but still remain in the general vicinity.  There are a few exceptions of folks who moved to the mid-West.  I might be one of the few who not only went to the far opposite East coast, I then moved across the world.

On the one hand, it feels good to be reconnected with them.  On the other hand, I also realize that I knew just a couple of people really well.  Maybe others had more “close” friends.  I didn’t hang out with the cool crowd per se but I knew most of them.  This has to do with the fact that I had recently moved to the States and didn’t know much about what happens in high school.  Whoever I ended up meeting and hanging out with is really who I stuck with.  I did what they did. 

I guess the cool thing I did was play sports throughout the year.  My name was constantly on the second period announcements because of that – either for cross-country or for tennis.  I did well in both of them.  I wasn’t great in soccer though I played it for three years.  When I didn’t make varsity my senior year, I decided I was going to take it easy and focus on tennis instead.  Turned out to be a good decision.  I played doubles and my partner and I did well enough to make it to the league championships.  We were the top ranked doubles team in our high school and ranked high in league as well.  Our team did well also.

It’s nice to be in touch with them and to meet them online.  I wonder how it would be if we met up again?  A few of them have been getting together.  I am not quite sure if I’d fit in with them now.  My life took a detour and sometimes you can’t go back.  But let’s take it a day at a time and see how things go.  Maybe I’ll make it back for the reunion!

Forrest Gump Was Right!

Life is like a box of chocolates.  You never know what you’re gonna get.  That’s what Forrest Gump quoted his mother as telling him.  Of course, he’s very much right.

Recently, I have been getting in touch with my high school friends on Orkut.  It’s amazing to find people from years and years ago that I haven’t talked to or even thought about, for the most part.  There’s the occasional friend I was in touch with but nothing too significant.  15 years later, I see them as adults.  Whoa!  What a trip!    Who would have thought it!?!

Most of my high school friends have lived a fairly normal life.  Many of the girls are married and have kids.  Many of the guys are married also with kids but there’s a handful of single folks there too.  Then there’s a few who got divorced.  A girl I dated got in touch with me a year or so ago.  We have been in touch on and off since then until she added me on the social networking site.  It feels like more frequent communication now since I can see what’s going on in her life through the site.  Anyhow, this girl has two kids and is onto her second marriage (possibly third!).  Either that tells you a lot about my judgment as a high school kid or it tells you how much people’s lives can change unpredictably.  You really never know what chocolates you get in a box.

Then there’s my closest friend from way back then.  He and I ran cross-country together during the summers and first quarters (into second).  We then played soccer together in junior varsity and varsity (well, he made it to var, I wasn’t that good).  He married his high school sweetheart.  I remember attending their wedding.  Had a great time!  Unfortunately, as I reconnected with him now, he is no longer married to this girl, who I also knew but wasn’t that close to.  The passion was no longer there it seems.  I don’t know if I buy that logic because this buddy of mine is smarter than that.  But, giving him the benefit of the doubt, especially since we haven’t spoken but had a couple of email exchanges, I can’t really say anything definitively.

One thing that stood out for me was that the majority of people who I have gotten in touch with have really stayed in the same city or vicinity.  Most of them have not moved out of the region.  That really surprises me.  Not only did I move to the East Coast, I also moved to India.  On the other hand, I guess it makes sense since their families are all local anyhow.  If their families didn’t move, less reason for them to move.

Yet, it made me reflect on how unstable my life really has been.  I consciously thought about that yesterday.  I was going on a very specific path, medical school, like every other Indian kid, but then my father passed away.  I had just finished my first year of college.  Since then, my life has been anything but stable.  Only relatively recently, about two or so years ago, have I started to come to grips with a lot of things that have happened.  But I slip back into the traumas of old very quickly.  It takes only a minor thing to jar me.  So I guess I haven’t full come to terms with things that happened, but I have come to grips with life in general.  I think on my own now instead of having thoughts (of anger usually) cross my mind by themselves.

I went from one coast to the other.  I went from one country to another.  I was in touch with friends I grew up with.  I then deliberately left them all behind.  I was in touch with family.  Then I chose to distance myself there (for good reason, as much of my problems came from them).  Today, I focus mostly on work.  I don’t have much of a circle here in India.  Sometimes I feel bad about not having friends.  Generally, though, I’m fairly satisfied with the simplicity and lack of chaos though.  (My mom is a source of chaos that I can’t avoid, but that’s a different story. )

Life really is like a box of chocolates.  You never know what you’re gonna get.

The Nature of Friendships

A friend and his wife were visiting India for the last two weeks.  I caught up with them yesterday on their way back to the US.  It was good to see them again although I think I was more interested in catching up with them than the other way around, but I could be wrong.  They had a real short trip and their stay in Delhi coincided with me being out of town and vice versa.  But it worked out, similar to how my Dad used to catch with a few of his friends – we met at the airport!  Well, not quite, but almost. 

I picked up Neal (name changed to protect the innocent) and his wife from the New Delhi railway station and dropped them off at the airport.  Before doing that, we went to the Ambience Mall in Gurgaon since they were hungry.  It was close to the airport so it was perfect (a suggestion Neal’s wife made).  Neal had wanted to treat me to dinner for picking them up and dropping them off.  Unfortunately, he ran out of desi cash and only had dollars on him.  I told him not to worry about it and we ended up having dinner until his wife decided to see if Pizza Hut would take a credit card.  They did.  And pizza it was (and it was really good, better than US Pizza Hut pizzas actually).

Neal had moved to Boston because his wife had joined Harvard Law School.  With her HLS time complete, they decided to head back to the Bay Area.  To them, that’s really home.  I met Neal through work.  We didn’t hit it off right away but we hung out a few times and then it was alright.  I think when he saw a few of my friends, it made a bit of a difference to him.  I thought he was a bit loudmouthed too but not in a really bad way.  It’s funny how the way we look can make such a difference – you can come across as friendly or not, or a whole lot of other things too I guess, just by your face.  Then you get to know people and you see a different side of them.  It takes time to get to know me.  As social as I can be, I’ve been that way since my Dad passed away.  It’s another one of those permanent character changes that resulted from life experiences since then.

I think childhood friends are the best, if you find good ones then.  You’ve gone through the battles when you were immature and more open to saying and doing anything.  You also hung out together all the time.  Of course, you continue to meet people in your 30s, but sometimes those friendships are more difficult to develop into closer ones.  I think a lot of that has to do with me and some of it has to do with the nature of friendships in general.

But people like Neal and a few others I met in Boston can indeed be lifelong friends, after the initial hiccups, and I’m sure we will be.

The Rage in Placid Lake

So I saw The Rage in Placid Lake with Jordan Brooking and Rose Byrne today. Wow, what a movie! It’s not a chartbuster kind of “wow”. It hit home because it’s a story of two best friends, since childhood, a guy and a girl. The movie starts with Gemma coming to the rescue of Placid when three male kids are beating him up. She beats the bullies up instead and the two of them become friends. As children, she is therefore a protector. You can see after they have grown older that the relationship is equal. They have a great give-and-take, just as a relationship between two best friends should be.

Why is the movie interesting to me? It very much reminded me of my own “best friend” relationship.  As we went through high school and college, we became best friends. She and I, let’s name her Priyanka, had the kind of friendship that Placid and Gemma have in the movie.

Placid and Gemma are constantly throwing witty, and sometimes sarcastic, comments at each other. They banter back and forth about each other’s lives but with each focused on helping the other by giving their opinion and feedback, even during arguments. There is genuine care. In fact, their arguments are enveloped with care (and sweetness) rather than hostility. They are the only ones each confides in. They know everything about each other. It’s how it was with my best friend also.

1.5Generation!? Really? Come on!

1.5 Generation!  Why not first generation or second generation?  Is there really a difference?  As a 2GI you may say, “If you aren’t our parents generation, then you’re the kids generation, you may not be exactly like me but you’re still 2GI.”  I beg to differ.  If you are a 1GI you may say, “Come on, beta, how does it matter?” even when you know it matters.  In fact, this blog is at least partly if not completely about this difference. Let me point out some basic experiences to illustrate the difference between 1GIs and 1.5GIs.  Then I’ll tackle the differences between 1.5GIs and 2GIs.

1.5GI means you have gone through high school in the US (or whichever country you moved to).  It may even mean you went through junior high there, actually.  This means you have gone to your high school’s football games on Friday evenings, you have taken the very uncomfortable huge yellow bus from your pick-up point to school and back, you have also taken this same bus to sporting events that you played in.

 

You have gone to pep-rallies, where you didn’t quite fit in but you found it new and fun.  You know exactly what it means to be a jock or a cheerleader, neither of which you were yourself.  You know about junior and senior year proms and the limos, whether you attended them or not, and what it feels like if you attended them or if you didn’t.  You know about being selected for and playing in varsity sports.  You know what it felt like to buy and wear letterman jackets.  You also know what a home room is and the second period announcements on the class loudspeakers.

You probably called your parents “Papa” and “Mummy” or more likely you modified these terms.  But you certainly weren’t comfortable calling your parents “Mom” and “Dad”.  You may have anglicized your name or had other people do it for you.  You may have worn slacks (i.e., trousers) to junior high or high school.  And you probably did it with white sneakers.  You folded your pants at the very bottom after taking the fold from the knee down.  You may have even had clearly parted hair, slicked in oil if you were a guy, or long, way-past shoulder-length if you were a girl.  You protested at this, but half-heartedly, because you sort of understood why your parents made you dress in that way.

You know these things yourself – not because an excited cousin told you or you read it somewhere!  You experienced it, the whole period of exhilarating newness and freedom yet confusion and weirdness. Yet you weren’t an adult immigrant with two decades of experience being brought up in India.  You didn’t spend your teens, the critically important foundational years, in the motherland.  You also weren’t born in the US.  You didn’t go through kindergarten and elementary school in the US where you were taught how to brush your teeth in soft circles instead of harshly up and down. 

You heard about Sesame Street from your younger siblings or same-aged cousins but you didn’t watch it yourself.  You didn’t have slumber parties organized at your or your friends’ homes by moms.  You didn’t make summer trips to India to see your grandparents and other aunts and uncles, never fully knowing who they were or why they kept pinching your cheeks. You are close to a FOB but that doesn’t describe you accurately or completely.  You are also not an ABCD.  In fact, you take offense to being called that more than you take offense to being called a FOB, although you are not jumping up and joy at that either.  So what are you?  You’re a 1.5GI.  I am a 1.5GI!

Tags: South+Asian, 1.5+Generation, Second+Generation