Strings attached ~

The salty ocean breeze slams on my cheeks and with it come tiny droplets of water from the waves that just hit the wall. Walking hand in hand with my closest friend, I have no care or concern for what's going on...I am just engrossed in conversation with her. Soon we make way towards one of the many stalls that have been set up along our walking path, facing the ocean. We buy diced pineapples generously sprinkled with black salt and pepper. Popping the pineapples in our mouths, we walk towards one of the empty benches and stare out into the vast expanse of water ahead of us.

This was a very frequent escapade me and my friends indulged in when stress got to us during our time in medical school. Very often, these visits to the beach side were purposely timed towards late evening so that we would not only avoid the scorching afternoon sun but also manage to dine out and walk home at night, under the moonlight.

I spent a good five and a half years away from home and family in Sri Lanka. True, there were time when I longed to be home with family but over these five years, I found my second family in Sri Lanka. This second family of mine is a weird mix - there's my best(est) friend who's just as crazy as me, there's another who is extremely talkative, yet another who cracks the funniest of jokes, another who knows the in and the out of gadgets, another who's scared of dogs, one who always oversleeps and is late for work, one who is the saviour of the group at classes, one who is hardly seen without her mobile phone, one who loves to eat, one who wants to put on weight and eats but fails always, another who is struggling to shed some fat and then, there's me - me, who got overly attached to this second family of mine.

Not a day goes by when I do not think of them ~