A Bridge across Time

 There is something strangely thrilling about finding an old friend on Facebook after twenty or thirty years.

You type a name into the search bar almost casually. You are not really expecting anything. And then, suddenly, there they are.

The face is older, of course. The hair may have changed. The smile looks familiar but somehow belongs to another lifetime. You stare at the photograph for a few seconds longer than you intended to.

Is that really him? Is that really her?

And then comes the flood.

A classroom. A school corridor. A shared lunchbox. A cricket match. A stupid joke that made no sense but had all of us laughing. The teacher we were terrified of. The friend who knew exactly when you were lying. The person who sat beside you when you were miserable and didn't need to ask why.

For a moment, twenty or thirty years simply disappear.

We like to think we have moved on from those years. We have careers now, families, responsibilities, mortgages, successes and failures. We have become people our younger selves could never have imagined.

And yet, when you see the name of someone who once knew you at fifteen, sixteen or seventeen, something inside you responds immediately.

You don't see the adult in the photograph.

You see the boy who used to run down the school corridor.

You see the girl who sat next to you in class.

You see the friend who knew you before you had learned how to present yourself to the world.

Perhaps that is why sending that first message can feel surprisingly difficult.

You type:

"Hey! It's been ages. How are you?"

Then you stare at it.

Delete.

Rewrite.

“Hi! Not sure if you remember me…”

Delete that too. Of course they remember you. Or perhaps they don't.

And that is where the awkwardness begins.

Because reconnecting with an old friend is not simply about finding them. It is about risking the possibility that the connection you remember may exist only in your memory.

What if they don't respond?

What if they see your message and ignore it?

What if they remember you differently?

What if the friendship that felt so important to you was not equally important to them?

There is a peculiar vulnerability in sending a friend request to someone who once knew you so well.

You can handle rejection from a stranger. But rejection from someone who shared your childhood with you feels different.

You wonder whether you have the right to knock on that old door after all these years.

And sometimes, the door doesn't open.

The friend request sits there.

Days pass.

Then weeks.

You tell yourself they may not use Facebook anymore. Perhaps they didn't see it. Perhaps they are busy. Perhaps they have their reasons.

And you pretend it doesn't matter.

But, if we're honest, it does.

Because somewhere beneath the adult we have become is that younger version of ourselves, still hoping to be recognized.

Still hoping someone will say:

"Of course I remember you."

And then, sometimes, something wonderful happens.

The message comes.

"Oh my God! Is that really you?"

And suddenly you are laughing at a joke from 1994.

You exchange photographs.

You discover where life took them. They discover where it took you.

You learn about marriages, children, careers, losses, illnesses, triumphs, cities and countries. You realize that while you were busy living your own story, they were living an entirely different one.

And yet the strange thing is how quickly the distance collapses.

Some friendships need no explanation.

You can pick up a conversation after thirty years and somehow it feels as though you only left the room yesterday.

Others don't quite survive the journey back.

The chemistry isn't there anymore. The memories remain, but the people have changed.

Perhaps that is the hardest lesson of reconnecting.

We are not actually reconnecting with the people we knew.

We are meeting the adults they became — and asking them to meet the adult we became.

Sometimes the two versions fit beautifully.

Sometimes they don't.

And perhaps that is okay.

Maybe the real gift of social media isn't that it brings old friendships back exactly as they were. It can't do that. Time doesn't work that way.

Its gift is that it gives us a small window into the lives of people who once mattered enormously to us.

It allows us, if only for a moment, to knock on the doors of our past.

Some doors open.

Some don't.

Some open just a little.

And some people walk through and stay.

I have come to believe that there is courage in sending that first friend request.

Not because it is technically difficult — but because it carries a tiny emotional risk.

It says:

I remember you.

Those years mattered to me.

I wonder what became of you.

And perhaps, most vulnerably of all:

I hope you remember me too.

After twenty or thirty years, maybe that is enough.

Not every friendship needs to be restored.

Not every memory needs a sequel.

Sometimes it is simply beautiful to discover that somewhere out there, the person who once shared a bench, a classroom, a playground or a piece of your childhood is still living, laughing and making memories of their own.

And for a brief moment, across all those years, you find each other again.

Older.

Different.

A little awkward.

But still, somehow, connected. But even after all this I think the saying "Har ek dost kamina hota hai" is a tagline which is appropriate for most friends except a few.

The above is AI generated using ChatGPT