I was thinking about some of my closest friends recently.
There was a time when we didn’t need a reason to call each other.
We knew what was happening in each other’s lives. We met regularly. Conversations could go on endlessly. And underneath all of that was a reassuring feeling:
If I needed them, they were there. And if they needed me, I was there.
Even ten years ago, many of us were still very much in touch.
Then something quietly changed.
Nobody Walked Away
There was no fight. No misunderstanding. Nobody decided that the friendship wasn’t important anymore.
We simply became busy living our lives.
Many of us had our children around the same period. First one, then the second.
Suddenly, weekends weren’t really ours.
School. Homework. Classes. Birthdays. Doctor visits. Family commitments. Careers. EMIs. Ageing parents. A hundred small responsibilities that somehow consume an entire day.
I can’t complain that my friends stopped calling.
I stopped calling too.
And somewhere along the way, people I once spoke to almost every day became people I might speak to once in a few months.
Meetings became rarer.
Sometimes a friend visits after a long time and we manage to meet — but only for 20 minutes before one of us has to rush back to another responsibility.
And we say the inevitable:
“Machi, next time we’ll sit properly.”
Then another year disappears.
And That Made Me Wonder…
I am 46 now.
If the last ten years changed our friendships this much, what will another ten years do?
Today we have children to take care of.
Ten years from now, we will be in our mid-50s.
Some friends are already living in different countries. Our children will be older and building lives of their own. We will have changed too.
Will we become close again?
Or will we become people who occasionally exchange birthday wishes and remember how close we used to be?
For some reason, that thought made me a little uncomfortable.
Then I started looking at it differently.
Maybe Friendship Has Its Own Seasons
Perhaps this isn’t something going wrong.
Perhaps this is simply how friendship travels with us through life.
In our 20s:
We have time, so we are always together.
In our 30s:
Life starts changing, but we are still strongly connected.
In our 40s:
We still love our friends, but everyone is overwhelmed with responsibilities.
In our 50s:
The children begin needing us less, and maybe we start asking: Who are the people I really want around me?
In our 60s:
Perhaps shared history becomes more valuable than almost anything else.
And suddenly I realised something.
At 46, maybe I am not witnessing the end of these friendships.
Maybe we are simply in their quiet middle chapter.
There Is Something Special About an Old Friend
You can meet an old friend after two years and, within ten minutes, somehow become 25 again.
The same jokes return. The same teasing returns. Stories that your family has heard a hundred times suddenly become funny again.
Because an old friend remembers a version of you that almost nobody in your present life knows.
They knew you before the grey hair. Before the responsibilities. Before the job titles, businesses, successes, failures, children and EMIs.
They remember your stupid decisions.
And unfortunately, they usually remember them in remarkable detail.
That kind of friendship is difficult to recreate at 46.
Maybe We Don’t Need to Become Close Like Before
I don’t think the answer is trying to recreate our 20s.
We can’t. And perhaps we shouldn’t.
Friendship at this age may simply mean sending a message for no particular reason.
A fifteen-minute phone call. A coffee whenever someone happens to be in town. An old photograph suddenly appearing in the WhatsApp group with:
“Dei, look at us!”
Nothing profound needs to be said.
Sometimes the message underneath all of it is simply:
I’m still here.
Don’t Wait for “Someday”
There is only one thing that worries me now.
We keep assuming there will be a better time.
After this project. After the kids’ exams. Next time I come to India. Next year.
But five years can quietly become ten.
And perhaps friendships don’t always end because something bad happened.
Sometimes they simply fade because everybody kept postponing the next conversation.
So I think I’ll make a little more effort.
Not to bring the old days back.
But to make sure the people who mattered in those days are still somewhere in the days ahead.
Because maybe the best ending to these friendships isn’t:
“We remained as close as we were when we were 25.”
Maybe it is something much more realistic — and much more beautiful:
We went to different cities. Some of us went to different countries. We raised our children. We built our lives. We became busy. We grew older.
We didn’t speak as often as we once did.
But somehow, we never lost each other.
AnandNataraj 