A long-lost relationship: Part II – Reconnecting

I had joined facebook from the very initial days of its existence, back in 2003. When it slowly became more widespread, I began reconnecting with many people from the past, people whom I had lost all contact with. I found friends from junior college, secondary school, even primary school on facebook. The world had been given a precious gift – the gift of re-establishing lost relationships. I searched for Isha frequently on facebook in those early days, always hoping that I would find her again in a world so vast and densely-populated. I scrolled through countless Isha Doshi profiles, looking through the photos to see if any of them was the right Isha. It never was.

One day, a few weeks after arriving in Uganda, I was online, waiting for a large file to download at an excruciatingly slow rate, and with nothing better to do, I decided to waste some time on facebook. I messaged my close friends, looked through my newsfeed, and once more, I don’t know why, I decided to search for Isha. The last time I tried to find her was over 2 years ago, when I was bored with nothing better to do than waste large amounts of time on facebook. I didn’t seriously think I would find her, but lo-and-behold, there on my screen, the 2^nd profile to pop up, was a face so familiar yet changed somehow. I clicked on her profile, and looked through her photos. I was stunned that I had finally found her. I sent a friend request and waited. A few days later, I noticed that she had accepted my request, but neither of us initiated any conversation. Perhaps we both remembered the last time we had tried to reconnect, and the awkward silence filling the gaps in our conversations. Perhaps neither of us knew what to say now, after so long. Who had she become? What was she like? Will there be any semblance of the old Isha that I knew and adored left in her?

I became preoccupied with other things, and all by forgot about this matter. Then, I received a facebook message from Isha. She had noticed that I had changed my current location to Kampala, Uganda. Her company that she set up with her husband has some major investments in Uganda, and her husband visits Uganda multiple times a year. She was astonished at the coincidence, and that prompted her first message to me. We sent a few messages back and forth, giving brief summaries of important events in our lives over the past decade (she got married and has 2 sons, I went to medical school and am becoming an obstetrician-gynecologist). Then, she told me that she was going to be in Nairobi for a few weeks, and asked me if I had time to travel there to meet up with her. And so it was with great excitement and trepidation that I boarded the Easy Coach bus for the 16-hour road trip from Kampala to Nairobi.