It's been a while since I've made a new friend. I still remember the lightheaded joy of meeting interesting folk when I newly moved to Hyderabad.

 

Where's that hunterlust now? I still do meet interesting people, but I let them slide into anonymy, or, worse, mere acquaintanceship: I don't even bother asking for their phone numbers after. Are there so many people in my life? Has my sphere of acquaintance reached its zero-energy radius?

 

Is that why (gulp) I'm moving out? To shake things up? To make brand new friends?

 

Of course all this apart from the obvious reasons: the glint of cheap money and sinful 1st world efficiency and the comforts it entails: moving to a clean, well-lighted place, leaving the evergrowing todo list of messes behind.

 

No, in the past distance has only driven my closest friends closer. It's only the miscellaneous who get dropped or at best relegated to the background connected by thin ethereal digital threads (damn you orkut).

 

The fundamental interconnectedness of everything precludes a clean start but, I hope, not a fresh start. Baggage remains, albeit in a cloakroom far far away. It helps, I think.

 

It's done now: the runaway has run away to a semi-new life. Waiting to see who I can be now.