Kindred spirits.

After a long time, I made a friend, of the kind of which I have but a few. The kind of friend you make for life, and about life. A friendship difficult to describe, but maybe as the kind of friend who you can risk not meeting for a longish period of time, because when you meet next, you had not not met. 
Life has delicious moments in store for us, if we trust that existence knows what it is doing. Someone out there will be a great friend for you someday, but he or she is being prepared for it right now, so if you met them today, they wouldn’t have the magnificent meaning they will have when you finally meet, or meet meaningfully.
The friend I met today I first met not too long ago, but 6 months ago, in a professional context. I had a moment of frission when I first met him, the kind of moment you look at in retrospect and realize it was a moment of being directed to pay attention to a significance. I’ve had those moments before: when I met Aejaz, Kaushik, Hemang, Jayanta, KKRam. I also realize now that I knew then that that was not the moment to seek a meaningful association, but that that moment was not too far off.
In 1990, I used to teach in church that the answers to the prayers you will pray 10 years from now are being readied by God. I remember wide smiles in church; who can deny that it is immensely edifying to hear something like that? In 2000 I had my first heart attack, and in the ICU Dr Kaushik Bhojani became my friend. That led to a long and blessing friendship and I found that the sheer fact that Kaushik was going through medical college at the time that I was preaching that principle was …. was …. incredible!!!!
Yesterday was an extraordinary day. Raju and I went to gsk, where Raju began his career 25 years ago. I tried to fathom Raju’s feelings. In the evening, I met Atul and Jayanta, with a view to introducing them. J left early, to go home, and Atul and I surrendered ourselves to a conversation hat had an import and a undeniability of its own. At some point, Atul told me a large part of his life, in chronological sequence. I did mine. Two lives, wading through two different rivers. As it turns out, Atul’s office is a minute’s drive from my residence. Imagine that. And when I dropped him home, I realized his house is a stone throw from Anand Prabu Lobo’s house. Anand is one of 3 or 4 friends from school, who I am deeply in touch with, these friendships having lasted over 45 years! I don’t make too much of these things, and I refuse to dismiss them as coincidences.
A friendship like this is nothing short of a gift. Like God sat back and said: “Al, here’s some happiness, just like that, because you are my child. No other reason.”