I am not sure if it was the 2nd or the 5th but, it was August of 1987. My first day at College. This was the day when I met V for the first time. She spoke fluent English with her friends. I could understand what they were talking about but, had no experience and confidence in English speaking like that. I was even afraid to talk with her. It took a few weeks before I figured out that she spoke Marathi, too. She had good handwriting and seemed to be very serious about taking notes in classes: a perfect candidate for me to copy class notes from, as I was busy doing everything except paying attention to our professors. Later on, I found some other more studious students to copy notes from and realized that V, although a little more serious about studies than me, was in the same category of lollygaggers. We were classmates, then friends, then good friends and then very good friends before getting married more than 8 years later.

During this last week, I got in touch with a couple of friends from college after about 16-17 years. One of them is very close by in New Jersey while the other one is in the farthest part of the world: Melbourne, Australia. It was so nice to talk with them after such a big gap and hear about what they have been doing all these years.