Friendship at First Sight!!

Have you ever felt an instant connection with some as if you have known them forever? You chat freely about anything and everything without any filters on. This week was a week well spent for me, because I met 2 such wonderful people and it was an amazing experience.

One of them, my colleague with whom I have been interacting for almost a month now. But yesterday night, when we came back to hotel from the client office and we just sat in the lobby for a round of tea, the conversation made its way through our pasts, our families, life in general, philosophical analysis, our struggles, hardships and what not. There were a lot of similarities in our upbringing and we were able to relate to each other's situations much better. When we paused and looked back at that 1 hour, we realized how much we had opened up to each other. She and I kind of felt that bond of comfort, that we could share our pasts and thoughts without any hesitance. I cannot be more thankful for getting to know her more, she is truly an amazing person and a fighter in her own way.

But more surprising was what happened this evening. I have been traveling to this client site at Pennsylvania almost every week. I hardly know the rest of the crowd that's in office outside the team I belong to. And things have been so busy that I never had time to interact even with folks in my neighboring cubicles. Since I planned to stay over weekend this time contrary to my normal Monday through Thursday travel; I was in office today that is on a Friday and there was a pretty relaxed environment as the day went by.

The office started getting empty as time passed and by 6 PM only I and another guy were left in the office. As I saw him leaving, I just waved to him and started a casual conversation. And in next 1 hour, we were chatting about hobbies, breakups, Mumbai, Painting, Family, Friends, he was sharing pictures of his family, me of my paintings, success stories of my dad and his grand dad, of future dreams, musical instruments, philosophies around life, around people and what not. It was amazing the way we went on and on sharing details of each other's life that one never shared with strangers. We had not even smiled at each other before this meeting and there we were blabbering out whatever came to our mind and heart.

This was friendship at first sight, no doubt.

There are people you know for years, and yet when you chat with them you are not that free. Unknowingly there is a calculated thought process always running at the back of your mind. But in this case it was like chatting with a free soul, we were not judging each other, just throwing out our life's history in the flow. As he stated, it was like we had all the data in the buffer and we just started flushing it all out. Very very rarely this has happened with me, in fact after many years I have encountered someone like this. I have a handful of very good friends with whom I share my life's goods and bads, but that relationship has been built over time. While in this case, I can't explain what made us trust each other to an extent of sharing some of the incidents that are very close to our hearts.

Like I always say, this world is full of surprises. And I am glad such pleasant surprises keep crossing my path as I tread along this bumpy road of life!!

- Dedicated to the two most wonderful souls that I have met after so long in recent past.

-Sarita
Dated- 24th Feb 2017

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