What is it about us that changes the way we feel about people? I know I've always been the greatest perpetrator of this crime, and yet I cannot quite put my finger on it. I have known and sometimes, loved, many people at various points in my life.

You meet people, you connect, you find things in common, you revel in the trivialities of life or indulge in the profundities of the universe, you come together, you grow apart, you move out and move on. Not every relationship ends on a bitter note. Not every relationship ends with a sense of finality to it, with a loud slam of the door or the sharp click of the lock.

Sometimes you don't even realise relationships are over and maybe because they're really not. They're probably like a half read book that you will return to later, or even like a completely devoured and well enjoyed book whose pages you might want to flip through again. The point is, you're not always aware of the transitions that take place, while they are actually taking place. You're not always pontificating over the subleties and nuances that you may have missed.

Eventually you bump into these friends, lovers or acquaintances again and suddenly you cannot reach out or let in anymore. I know that circumstances change and so do people, more so when much time has lapsed. But I cannot entirely rest my assumptions on these somewhat simple and easy answers. I believe that if we were able to connect with these people at some point in the past starting out as complete strangers, it shouldn't be so difficult now. It should be easier this time around because a certain sense of familiarity still lingers, and unless of course the parting was severely bitter the first time around there should be no reason to not be able to reconnect.

What is it then that drives us to selective amnesia a few years later when a chance meeting should bring you face to face or screen to screen or wire to wire again.
Awkward silences begin to seep into all the time lapsed and sometimes unfounded suspicions start to hover around in the air. Why? Now, after all this time... What could I possibly have to trade off this time? How am I supposed to switch back on?

Mercifully sometimes, you don't actually have to get around to doing any of the above. If you're lucky enough that chance meeting never progresses to anything beyond just that - a chance meeting. Sometimes it may a lead to an odd follow up phone call or cup of coffee even and then slowly dies another natural death (or so it seems). But there are times, and oh those sticky times, when you really cannot relegate the refreshing of the relationship to a few sparsely spaced out phone calls or cups of coffee. Times when everything that ever transpired between you appears out of the thin air and every unit of time and space automatically gets refilled. But you still cannot quite remember or comprehend the reason you drifted apart in the first place. You still cannot find a reason to reconnect, rebuild or reinvest.

And I'm only talking about the category of people that does not include major relationships! Life on the fringes sometimes comes to fore. You might choose to push it back to the edges or let it dive straight into the whirlpool of your current existence. We are changing, always and every single day. Or are we really?