Different Streams

All through my graduation or till 2009/2010, I had my circle of friends with whom I constantly engaged in conversations, enjoy arguing with them over various topics, maybe because we were all at a similar stage/priorities/mental/maturity levels and being together on a day-to-day basis. 

Thereafter, I was the only one who got placed in a MNC company in India and my entire close circle left for their Masters in USA. Even though we all were thousands of miles apart, I never felt things have changed in our phone conversations during one on one but then in group calls I realized that they all are at a different frequency – which is quite obvious given that all of them were meeting each other or engaging in similar activities for their studies or trips. But I never bothered about it since it was just over phone/video calls. 

The very first time I came to USA in Dec 2014, meeting a lot of them in 2015 as well, I realized I am the odd person out. They have found their own group of new friends, indulging in a lot of common topics, arguments, teasing each other for their lives during Masters and lot of others things. 

After coming back in 2022 again to USA, catching up with them I realized I could rarely make active conversations or contribute to an ongoing topic. Hardly 2 or 3 times I felt being part of the group but otherwise am now merely a bystander/spectator smiling (or forced) or observing them. 

I see they blended well, along with their families + kids while my forced stay away from USA from 2018 to 2022 for about 4 and ½ years meant the gap grew a lot in terms of families, kids, settlement, financial status, and blah blah blah. 

Sometimes, I feel I am standing at cross roads watching all others zooming away. 

For a fact, I never felt any peer pressure but I must admit that now there are times (although its last only some seconds) I see that. Movies are my biggest saviors at all times and divert my mind from a lot of external pressures. 

Note:

• Being the only person from my college to join the MNC Company and the training batch, there is a stark difference of how I am with my training batch mates and how I was with my friends before 2010. I made friends with lot of new people. Even in a group of 10 to 15 members of my batch mates, I constantly felt very much involved in the group conversations. I felt at home during those 6 months of my training time. But like all bad things end, so do good things. After the end of 6 month training, the whole batch split away to multiple projects/places and it was never the same – like my friends before 2010.
• 4th December, 2014 was the day I travelled to USA (SFO) – will save this for another fine day