Little things we take for granted

Quote source: Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
Picture : Getty images

We suddenly bumped into each other near the lifts at Express Towers, after 10yrs. I was already in the lift, and she was way behind in the long queue, when we both spied each other. "Hey, what are you doing here?" I yelled. "I work here" she yelled back over the heads of the people milling into the lift, giving me her office name. "I work here too!!" I yelled again, giving my office name this time. But before we could exchange phone numbers, the doors closed and we lost touch all over again!

I wondered if going up to her office and looking for her was a good idea. I toyed with the thought but never acted on it till one day a colleague of mine came up to me and gave me her phone number. They took the same train to work and she asked my colleague about me and got my no. We tried to fix up a date to meet for lunch - after many "tomorrow isn't too good for me" and "Shit, I am travelling the whole of next week" from both ends, we finally decided to skip the lunch plan and did a quick coffee instead. We laughed at how filmi our meeting was!! We also promised to catch up more often and go out for the long lunch we had to forgo. How difficult could that be?? We worked in the same building, for heaven's sake!! 

But sadly the truth is that inspite of both of us having offices separated by just a few floors, we hardly met - we were both trying to cope with work, family and commuting and busy making it through each day like any other Mumbaikar! 

Long lunches were dismissed as a fantasy and replaced by occasional riding the lift together and a even rarer quick coffee break! And meeting each other during the weekend never crossed our minds! We lived quite far away from each other and lets face it, in Bombay, you end up making more effort to meet out of town friends who are visiting, than meeting people who live 5 minutes away!

I moved out of Bombay and we lost touch all over again. 

Then all of a sudden today, I got a call from another friend who gave me the shocking news - the friend in question had passed away. For a while I just sat numb, in shock, unable to think or react. Then the first pangs of regret began to seep in - regret that I never seriously made an effort to keep in touch, regret that I just took it for granted that there would come a tomorrow when we would find time to meet and catch up. 

As I tried to recall how many people I have sincerely made an effort to keep in touch with; and by touch, I don't mean having them on my friend list and commenting on status updates and photos on FB, I became conscious that the number was horrifying in its non-existence! Unfortunately the sad truth is that there are so many people in one's life, people who mean something, people you care for, you enjoy spending time with but whose existence you simply take for granted. You end up postponing meetings and lunches and dinners because you have work or household errands to run or sleep to catch up on..... till one day life jolts you awake.

And whilst on the subject of taking for granted, it doesn't apply to friends or family alone, but to even the little things in our life. When now I look at the world through the little Vs' eyes and am forced to make up surprised noises to share their wonder and amazement in little things - rain drops, flowers, moving clouds, a full moon, flying birds, thunder and lightning .... I wonder, when was the last time I stopped to notice these, simply for their beauty? 

The last time I actually enjoyed the rains was 10 long years back when on a crazy rainy day in Mumbai, I took a train with 3 crazy friends and got stranded and soaked to the skin. We shared many laughs, lunches, drinks, dinners, stories, gossip, and empathised over gruelling work hours, mean bosses and meaner clients. But then we moved on and hardly got time to keep in touch, except through the the new omnipresent entity- Facebook. We made plans to meet for dinners that never took shape. And the last time I looked at a full moon or at flowers or dew drops, I was busy exploring the prowess of my D-90 and all I cared about was getting the perfect shot rather than appreciating the beauty that lay in front of my eyes, or in my case, my lens! 

Taking for granted is a virus that attacks each of us - we find it more convenient to check up on loved ones by reading their regular status updates, rather than by making the effort to call or meet. We go to the most picturesque places in the world and when we do, we are so busy looking at them through the latest Carl Zeiss lens and storing the images in our 8GB HDD that that we forget to stop and just take it all in and store it in the only hard drive that finally matters - our memory!

And so we carry on... forgetting how precious time is, how beautiful life is and how countless our blessings are! 
We carry on - till the next jolt shakes us awake.....

Quote source: Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Picture Source: Getty images