Ruminations of a meandering mind

It’s been a little over five months since I bumped into an old friend of mine. We had lost track of each other at some point and were glad to find each other again. When we departed after exchanging contact details, I remember exactly what we mouthed to each other in unison: “Keep in Touch”. I haven’t heard from him since.

Then this other day, a colleague sent a goodbye mail. As usual, there were these three ostensibly ubiquitous words to finish off the mail with the link to the personal mail id.

“Keep in Touch” : these are words probably written or spoken at will in mails or when we have to part from friends or relatives. It seems to me so puerile that most of the time, we use it as a formality and never with any clear-cut intentions. It’s absurd that we use it at all and make it sound a big farce

I guess there’s always this initial inertia to keep in touch. It’s like the hesitation in taking that big first step towards achieving anything important. Or is it because of something that occurred to me just as I type this that we never actually “Keep in Touch”. I realize on dissecting these three words that the onus is on the other person to make the first move. I mean we never say, “I want to keep in touch”, do we? So the person who uses this sentence is not at fault, since it’s always up to the receiver to get into the act.

So the next time we part with someone or have to send a goodbye mail, it would be apt if we candidly put forth the condition along side. Something like “I want to keep in touch, but only if you would be so nice as to do the needful first” :)