A Friend, Found

Vinuth Shankar
Jul 10, 2017 · 2 min read

So on my trip to Toronto, I decided to meet my friend A, who I hadn’t seen in 5 years.

A and I went to school together, we had an overlap of just 2 years together in a small school in a little town in UAE, where everyone knew everyone else, at least among the Indian families.

We had been friends but not close friends — for no real reason. In a nutshell, the awkward early teen years, my shyness around girls and moving back to India were reasons why we never got thick.

Anyway, I was part dreading meeting her here in Toronto because I felt I just didn’t know her enough. I was just stubborn and close-minded, that’s all I can say. When I called her up to fix a time and place to meet, I found she now had an accent from living here for two years. I found it difficult to get over the accent because it was different from how I remembered.

But meeting her has taught me that you could be so WRONG about what you think of someone and how different they are in reality. I’m so stunned that I was never close to her but she’s totally my type — she’s the kind of girl with whom I would imagine myself being really good friends with.

I thought I’d spend an hour or two with her, we ended up walking around Toronto for about 7 hours — eating, drinking, shopping and enjoying the glorious sun. All the while I felt like I was discovering a completely new person. I can’t believe I actually didn’t care to make friends with her before. It’s moved me so much I’m writing about it.

I’m happy that I have a friend in Toronto. As long as I work for the CA team in Google, I will visit this city at least once a year. But what if she moves away? That’s a very real possibility. And for how long will I work for CA? Or for Google?

I guess the one thing I can take away from this experience (apart from this friendship I will cherish) is that it’s so easy to be closed in my mind to meeting people — for whatever reason (inferiority complex in my case), but I might be missing out on relationships that are pure gold.

The positive takeaway is I have friends living and working in a lot of hot-spots around the world — new friends to re-discover!

A, you’re amazing and I love this one day we shared in Toronto.

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