Old friends...

I got a mail from an old friend accusing me that I am following the footsteps of another friend X , who doesnt send more than one email in a year to friends. Ironically he had asked another friend for my phone#, who has never bothered to keep the phone#s of other friends who stay in other cities.

Even though the thought that I'm being remembered made me feel good, the accusation put me off.

I am reminded of the song by Eric Clapton "Before you accuse me, take a look at yourself". (Even though it's about a slutty girlfriend who leaves him, it suits this context perfectly fine!)

Before accusing me, my friend should check his sent items or dialled calls in his phone, if he has initiated a conversation with me in the past 3 months. The answer would be NO. So how am I supposed to write paragraphs on emails to a friend who only writes two lines once in a blue moon like "how are you & where are you" ?

Simply put, friendship lives on reciprocation.
If you don't seem to act concerned abt me, sooner or later I would mirror you. May be it's a bad choice but I am not inclined to spend my time & money on friends who don't even reflect 10% of what I do.

"why do you try to follow bad examples? After all friends don't keep scores and you should try to keep in touch with your friends even if they are trying to reach you", opined another friend. Well, I did try to be nice and call up my friends & email them whenever I could, inspite of them never returning a call. (free sms, emails & phone calls from the office, clearly don't count) But after a while, I felt like knocking on the wrong door and decided to cut off friends who aren't really inclined to talk to me on their own. Probably I'm a bit immature for my philosopher friend, but I like my friend to call me at least once in a year, otherwise I delete his details from my contacts. I believe there's nothing wrong in it.

After marriage, most guys tend to go into a shell. They go out with some colleagues for lunch & coffee and over the wknds they are with their family. They remember old friends once in a while but they don't bother to spend some time & money to reach out to them.

If you suffer from shell-complex-syndrome and stay out of touch, I am not going to complain. So be kind and don't complain abt me either. You burnt the bridges behind you and not me.
End of the story!

P.S: Was it Pink Floyd who said "everyone's expendable and no-one has a real friend"? We all have a few real friends, others are bound to fade away in due course of time, after all shedding is only natural.