A life that was!

Dedicated to all the lady-spouses at ISB who have enjoyed and endured this last year!

Nostalgic it is….
But this is not a totally unfamiliar feeling. I was getting nostalgic about the first few days at ISB when many firsts happened. First time I stepped into the atrium, first time I went in search of the bookstore, first time I searched for a rest room in the academic center, first time I met my neighbor P, first time I met someone who was having breakfast by herself and the conversation sparked immediate friendship. Many firsts and everything took me back by a year.

In about a week from now I am going to be out of here. This is also not an alien emotion. I felt it exactly a year ago while moving out of our apartment overlooking Hudson and while we took off from the Newark airport with no return ticket. Yet what is different about now is that we have always known that this day would come and exactly when it would come. We always knew ISB was a temporary phase of life, and that we would have to say bye-bye to the beautiful campus, refreshing night walks, wonderful studio and all the nice housekeeping staff that made our living in Hyderabad so much more pleasurable.

What we did not know was that the friendships formed years after childhood, years after school and college would still mean something and letting them behind was going to be difficult. It has been an amazing year of forging new friendships, friendships of a different kind, with the kind of people that are from an entirely different culture and geography. Strong bonds of friendships are usually formed at the tender age of innocence or the confused age of adolescence. IMHO, most of the adult life relationships tend to be more business like and judgmental. But here at ISB, I was made to rethink my opinion as there was something common amongst us all spouses, something unfulfilled and some shared pain that made a lot of us feel connected in some way or the other. It was the first time for many of us to have so many married women as friends. It was not an uncommon event to share our pretty personal qualms with other spouses here.

The common vein was mostly the overworked husbands and of course the famous mother-in-laws. I am not sure how lasting these relationships are, but I am certain its one of a kind that rings a special point in our lives back in time.