I write this from Calcutta, where the time is somewhat past four in the morning because sleep has been abandoned because of some remaining traces of teenage mutiny though that age has been left behind some years back now, and it's quite cold.
Just as I started to write this, I realized that what I want to say can be replied to in just one very expressive word- "Duh!" And it is quite simple.
People you know and who don't live in the same city as you can drop off the face of your life if they drop off the face of the internet.
I don't know why this occurred to me just now, but I realize how true this is. There you have someone whom you might have had lively and lovely conversations with when you saw them everyday, and thought that you'd never run out of things to say to that person, and suddenly the person moves away. You think, alright, its not the end of the world. Theres still the telephone. The internet, for God's sake, the ultimate competitor to Nokia in connecting people. So you follow the person on facebook, twitter and what not, live their cryptic lives along with them, commenting occasionally, and they commenting back. The calls never happen, because you live under the delusion that tomorrow is another day when you will pick up that phone and call that person, even if the other person doesn't call you. After all, that friendship is important to you. You don't want to be that person who moves on with their life so much that there is no space in their heads of this friend who is not a part of your daily routine. These internet blurbs serve to act as the only comforting anchors that reassure you that you aren't actually forgetting that person. Like so, a human being of flesh and blood is reduced to status messages of a hundred and forty characters or grainy photographs from mobile phones. And if miracles do happen, and you manage to call that person after a span of two months or more, and naturally, don't have much to talk about, you still have the internet to fill in the conversation gaps. " Yes I did read what you wrote the other day, and yes I did see that picture." " Oh, wasn't what so-and-so wrote yesterday the funniest thing?", but that's it. From then on, you ask how the work is going, doesn't _____ city really suck? and if you are Bengali, you move on to moaning and being nostalgic about Calcutta and the FOOD. The conversation ends and you are uncomfortably at peace about the situation for the next two months.
 Your intellect tells you that the worst has happened. The other person has moved on. Scarier, YOU have moved on. But you ignore intellect. Who doesn't. Its a matter of principles.
 But if you find, suddenly, this person has not much to say, the updates becoming sparser and sparser, and the pictures more infrequent, you don't notice it at first. But suddenly you realize that it is time to admit to yourself that a revolution has happened. that friend is just a person whom you happened to have known in your recent past. It is galling. Because you don't want that change.
 Yet, do you call that person, do you make a genuine effort to reconnect? I don't exactly know how many of us do. We are so wrapped up in our own present and egos that we generally assume that we are being polite in not wanting to disturb the other persons choice of not being as close and for God's sake, CHANGES HAPPEN, DEAL WITH IT! No one, but a few fortunate souls, turn out to be the person they set out to be, some intelligent person must have said. Its a part and parcel of being a grown up.
But it sucks, you know? Being an adult? Being so involved in being initiated into the cult of grown ups?  I don't know why we stop ourselves from doing something absolutely stupidly juvenile like writing an e-mail, or a letter to a person whom you fear, absolutely candid, telling them this is what is really going on with your life and your REALLY want to know whats actually going on in theirs'? Draw a card, write a song, and if you are completely artistically impaired, write a computer application to start a real conversation... Do something!
 I realize that what I've stated above isn't the only reason behind people drifting away from each other, but maybe this doesn't have to be one of them.
Because it is truly saddening if one loses ten people for the above reasons when one also loses three people whom you're not interested in and they are not interested in you. Otherwise, we are actually making such a concept as the Great Disconnect a real thing.

travel from life in the south

This is me taking another chance, another attempt at the very beginning. I feel like a person who has lost her home to an awful fire and since then hasn't been able to settle, what with the bad landlords and inconvenient neighbors. And somewhere in between all this, everything about me has changed, or so it seems, except the thirst to express, or it might just be the last remnant of a deeply ingrained habit, the habit gone, but the urge remains. Or, I just don't want to believe that I have changed into that person who cannot express at all.
Hence this is it. I shall try to not make this one fail like the protected one I had before. I shall attempt to express. But the methods to the madness has changed. I have lost the faith in words. That would happen to you when something you put a part of yourself into for a good number of years is killed unfortunately. So you shall see some pictures, hear some music and maybe you will hear some words out of me, if I don't feel particularly shy at that moment.