Momentous Occasions

I take you back to my very first day at uni. I was sat in the back of the auditorium next to my best friend, watching the other first-year Physics & Maths students trickle in. A pale looking girl with an overstuffed bookbag tried to manoeuvre herself into a front-row seat with great effort. And then a pair of white socks in sandals sat down on the seat next to mine and eagerly opened its notebook, pen at the ready. I shot a panicked glance at my best friend, signalling: "Get me out of here". She however, seemed to find the stereotypical nerd attendance amusing and intriguing rather than scary. So I stayed.

The Head of Physics & Maths entered the auditorium and a hundred voices went silent. "Welcome. By the end of this year, 50% of you will have dropped out or failed. Only 40% of you will walk away with a degree in Physics or Maths in four years time... ". A week later, I was spending the better part of my days playing Trivial Pursuit and Poker down the campus pub. And over the next few months and years, I somehow became part of a close-knit group of seven, all of whom, 4 years later, made the final cut.

Since then, we've all scattered across Europe. At any given time, one or the other was abroad, in transit, or returning home. But what marks us as a group today still, is exactly this fluidity. Some bond that transcends these gaps in time and geography. We leave, only to return from time to time, picking up the thread as if we never left. And though we evolve, we somehow keep finding each other.

Yesterday, for the first time in 6 years, all seven of us were in the country again at the same time. And for the very first time, we all brought cameras. It's strange. Somehow we never end up taking pictures of stuff we do when we meet up. Here's a group of friends that means the world to me, yet I have no pictures of them. It seems we were all thinking the same thing yesterday and as if to make up for lost time, we collectively shot hundreds of pictures in an atmosphere of merry chaos. I went to bed last night feeling rather emotional. I struck it lucky. I really did.