Tending Towards an Average

It is the law of averages at work.

Back in my PhD days (in Bangalore, for the uninitiated), the social clock perennially ticked. Our work, or rather working, was fluidic-ally  adjusted around the now-nothing-now-here jamborees. The latter is a fair exaggeration, since the outings could as well be a mundane exercise like a meal in the mess. The entire gang (about the five and a half of us - the fraction accounting for a non regular member) would ensure that the meal is synchronously had. And it 'matter-eth' not even if everyone else has to wait for close to an hour for the last one to show up. We had to make a grand entry in the mess in full strength, stop the mess guys in their tracks and scrape the vessels for the long awaited lunch thereafter......
And then off-campus friends complained, that we weren't catching up enough (despite having a minimum of 3 conference calls per week). What better way to appease them, than to plan a weekend of movies, cooking and idle chatting - on the preceding Monday, so that the week staring ahead would fly off in anticipation....

Cut to the present, PhD over, base shifted to home grounds (read Delhi), and not unexpectedly, relocation blues strike. Does seem odd when you find that the roots to your very own city seem a little shaken. Small things like a brand new flyover, or a shop that you had seen for years at a site, wound up and dusted off - add to the unfamiliarity of it all. To top it all, you discover that your social life has come to a grinding halt. Quite obviously, it is the 'non-family' social life I'm talking of. The connect with the old gang is restricted to those intersection weekends when you are not travelling or tied up with family commitments and when they are not travelling and or wiped off by more important things. And when there are weekend-plans brewing up in the office, you're like - yeah, whatever, I'm in...!!

Unmistakably, the law of averages...