“…So as I was saying” - The irresistible itch to finish deep, meaningful conversations

I’ve always loved them - Long outpourings of love, joy, grief and all that doesn’t make sense in this baffling adventure called life!

Shared with friends, through relationships cultivated over years, decades, over life experiences that broke us and shaped us.

They felt like a recharge to me, whenever I felt my battery depleting.

They helped me pick up threads with friends thousands of kilometres and often several months apart. Sometimes, several years apart. It felt like everything else changed around me while this relationship remained constant.

I’d be the guy who’d start a story in a drawing room, then not be thrilled about the latest interruption, then carry forward the conversation into another room and resume: “…so” and everyone would turn to me - “Haan bhai kar le”.

And then, I became a parent. Not once but twice. Not several years apart but two under two. And just like that - long, meaningful conversations went out the window.

I remember those first few months when a fellow parent asked me a question I began licking my lips at…but several HA HA HOO HOOS AND BHA BHOO BHA BHOOS later, when I tried picking it up again with a “…So”, the listener couldn’t afford me the luxury of listening! It was my itch versus their child.

That part of me died a slow, painful death. The itch got hammered out of me. It still exists but has been pushed into the recesses of my heart.

All of a sudden, a new kind of relationship got discovered. The one where you may not even know each other’s last names but can arrange a playdate within 30 minutes.

I resisted these at first. Found these relationships hollow in comparison. Kept yearning for my older ones. But parenthood, especially early on, can be as relentless as joining the army. It’s omnipotent and omnipresent - you don’t have a choice.

Gradually, a new appreciation for these newer need-fulfilling-relationships-that-may-not-last-over-time got nurtured within me.

Now, every now and then, I meet a non-parent and my kids interrupt their long, meaningful story. And then they try picking it up: “…So”. And now, I’m the one not able to reciprocate. After all, it’s their itch versus my children…