Time Value Of Friendship

My childhood dream is to buy a time machine. Thanks to technology, I’ve brought one from Delhi’s Chor Bazaar. My purchase didn’t happen today, it happened* in the coming centuries. It was a one seater machine & I brought it in exchange of my dozen goats. Oh! It includes my favorite 6 months old whitey also. Before departing Whitey said in its plain voice “Don’t worry Krishnan, I’ill meet you somewhere in the time cycle. Those were the last words that it whispered to me through its Animal to English voice converter. With hard mind but with great expectations on the adventure ahead I came out of the market.

Time to move ahead….I love clockwise motions hence I decided to come to today by traveling through the past, where I lived a few centuries ago. My Monkey Mind told me that I should visit all the centuries in-between, but you know the life of a Manager. With targets & deadlines in hand, I can’t afford to halt in all centuries. With lot of efforts I pacified the Monkey.. no.. no.. my mind, I’ll stop in two places only. I pressed the digit 7 preceded by the digit 1.

Oooz.. came the 17th century. I landed in a small and beautiful village with lots of trees & flowers, animals & birds and of course humans & emotions. As a proof of being visited, I wanted to take a photograph with a fellow human being. With a Kodak in hand I said “hello friend” to the lonely young farmer there. He look very sad & depressed, his eyes were wet, it seems like he is waiting for somebody. Without expecting a reply I continued “Why are you so sad friend?”. Like an unexpected Tsunami came the reply “You called me Friend?“. An irrelevant answer but I continued “Yes my dear friend, but why are you so sad?”. With a long breath he continued “ I’m thinking about my childhood friend, he left to the northern state, all my efforts to contact him failed. I’m thinking about those merry days with him”. “What efforts?” this was me with inquisitiveness. “I’ve sent message through five pigeons in the last five months, I’ve sent two messages through the merchants, but nothing worked out. I didn’t got any reply. I’m not sure whether my messages reached him or not”. My mind started pronouncing “Poor century, no proper communication medium. The most valuable to any human’s life is one’s friend & here they are living a life where friends out of the province are just like friends out of life. They have time to think about friends but no chance of communicating! I don’t want him to worry again by thinking about me so I quit with a bye and this time it is just a bye and not a “bye friend”.

With that abrupt termination I landed in my second destination. The 18th century. Here again with a Kodak in hand & a search in mind, I approached a young man with a newspaper in hand. With little hesitation I whispered “Hello Friend”. This time the reception was very good. There was a formal chit chat on the details of each other. Oops! to my surprise he is the descendent of the villager whom I met in the 17th century. As my watch started ticking I remembered the deadline for sales report submission & hence made a couple of departure statements to the young man. Before I depart he gave me a piece of paper & said “friend give me your address, I’ll write to you, we shall be postal friends”. My inquisitiveness started functioning “So you communicate with your friends only through post?”. ‘Yes” came the reply. After a short pause he followed “I write to my friends & I’ll get reply from them within a month or so. We are all well connected. After all friendship is nurtured by communication”. I was puzzled “ a reply after a month! is this communication?” my mind started grinding my head. Well it’s time to move out of her. I Quit.

Now I’m back to my time on time. I’m in front of my PC compiling my sales report. I looked around to relax, observed the guy next to me, it required two full minutes for me to realize that his face is similar to the people whom I met at the 17th & 18th century. Yes. He is also a descendant of the same family. As I approached him, I could see his hands engaged with the mouse & eyes stick to the monitor. I started in my usual way ‘hello Friend”, this time there was no reaction from him. After a minute his lips moved up & down to pronounce “I’m busy now, please don’t disturb”. With an unknown sense of failure, I went outside for a cupacaffe. Mind said relax and it traveled back to the days memories (WoW! It travels without a time machine), my mind again started.. “His 17th century ancestors had lot of time for making friends & thinking about friends but there was no medium for communication. For his 18th century ancestor, the situation is different, he has ways to communicate but I thought it is inefficient. Now when I look at the current descendant I doubt does he ever have the time to make friends? Even if he has friends will he be having the time to communicate with him? Throughout the day he is sitting in front of the machine which can communicate with the whole world, but does he have the time to mail them up? Am I mailing my old school mates? Are we lagging behind those 17th & 18th century people? If that is so should I naturally travel to the future or forcefully travel back? Should I call this the age of possibilities or the age of inabilities towards possibilities?”