Though I love to say I don’t need more friends than the ones I already have, I have had the privilege of making friends wherever I have existed. Whether it was a boss during an internship who wasn’t even physically present and since this was pre-covid, we didn’t have any face-to-face conversations in the three-month period I was working with her. Phone calls, messages, emails, sure – but no facetime.
Or it was my students who were close to my age and spoke to me because they thought I could understand the vagaries of being a teen with a learning disability in a city as vast and fast as Bombay.
It’s one of the reasons I love consuming any kind of content that’s around friendships. I was recently reading a book where these two male characters who had little in common, apart from that they followed the same leader and were interested in war strategies and training, become friends. They go from suspicion to rivalry to respect to teasing in a span of three books and their banter made me inordinately happy. Which is why I also love Bridgerton and The Umbrella Academy (even if I can barely keep up with all the timeline games).
When I joined Blogchatter as a blogger and then a team member, the word community didn’t exist in my vocabulary. I have always been pretty okay with writing being an isolated job and didn’t think I was missing anything.
Cut to 8 years and 5 meet-ups later, I cannot imagine I have so many friends, some of whom only know me as the person who knocks on their email inboxes every Tuesday.
On 10th August 2024, all thanks to one WhatsApp message from Manali, we had a Blogchatter meet-up in Bombay. So many new and old faces turned up and it was the best 3 hours I spent. I laughed so much that my cheeks were hurting by the time I had returned home!
We were a little unsure of how many people would come because rains, distances, traffic and Bombay are a thing that do not combine well. It was such a pleasure to see so many people who had come simply to meet fellow bloggers. We started the evening with a little round of introduction. The most gratifying thing to hear were the “aaaahhhhs” from the bloggers when an introduction concluded with the blog name. So many of us know each other because we have read one another on a blog hop, during the A2Z challenge or just randomly on a social media channel.
While introducing myself, I spoke about how important having a community is, especially for creative people. I couldn’t believe that me, who didn’t care about making more friends, was feeling emotional over having so many people who knew me through my words. It is the best feeling, listening to people talk about what prompted them to start their blog, how the lack of friendships made them stop and how discovering a community helped them pull through.
My family always gets so intrigued whenever I talk about community members. They don’t know how to catalogue them: are they colleagues, acquaintances, internet friends, creative souls…what and who are they? Frankly, even I don’t know who they are. All I know is, meeting them makes me feel alive, a part of a whole, giving me fresh perspective on life and creativity.
Do you remember that Airtel song from eons ago that went “har ek friend zaroori hota hai?” Meeting so many of you on that Bombay afternoon was a reminder that every person brings their unique flavour into your life and all of them are necessary for a dish well made. Miss one ingredient and the dish called life won’t be as scrumptious.
Thank you for being my friend, friend.
This post is a part of ‘Friend Indeed Blog Hop’ hosted by Manali Desai and Sukaina Majeed.
Header Photo by Emre Can Acer
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