Speed Dating?

As someone on Wikipedia would describe it, speed dating is where a group of people meet other people in a room for a short, limited span of time in an attempt to become familiar with their existence. As for others on a dating app, this would be the start of a matchmaking process to identify eligible singles (or others, depending on your taste) in an attempt to form interested pairs (or groups ofc) who can continue meeting outside of this room. But imagine a life where you are constantly on the move, meeting new people, and at the end, you look back and have next to no constants. Welcome to my life!

I was born in a city and raised in a couple of others, all of which were thousands of kilometres away. I am sure your mind went, "Were either of your parents in the defence or with a bank?". None, I tell everyone. My dad practiced wanderlust, even before it was considered cool. But the truth is that my dad was struggling to find a job that would give him both mental peace and a salary that would allow him to raise two kids. I need to point out that he wasn't alone on this mission; my mom also did her part in contributing to the family income. But it was worse with my dad, as even with us moving to different places for my dad's work, he would still be required to travel to other places as part of his work. And that's where my relationship with speed dating starts.

My dad becomes this person who I'd speak to, or rather all of us together would speak to for around 2 minutes a day, as you would in a speed dating setup, because those days STD calls were super expensive, and even more so if you went above the 2 minute mark. Not that he didn't care about us, but he was forced to be away and save every penny to give us a good life. 

Now, because we were moving to different cities, I was also going to different schools and making "friends" who, when I look back now, were merely acquaintances who I would spend time around without any emotional connection. Imagine going to three different schools and being in touch with just a couple of people. I am sure most people who read this will not find it surprising because life happens and people need to move on, but don't you remember faces, or at least names? I don't! Or maybe I am exaggerating. I have faint memories of a Milind who had vitiligo, a Yuvaraj who was going to be sent to boarding school soon, and a couple of other girls who also dressed as rabbits with me for some play our teacher had prepped us for. 

But the point here is that an unconscious bias in me started looking at friendships or even stronger relationships as a thing that has a time limit on it—not one that I define, but that's how it was meant to be. You go to a different city, a different neighbourhood, or a different institution, meet people on a daily basis (for a few years or months), and go away without anything holding you back. I started coming out as a rude or arrogant person who never spoke to people or judged them too much because, to me, the clock was ticking and Thanos was going to snap soon. 

Here's where, in the timeline, I graduated from high school and, like most humans on the face of the earth (including you, my friend), decided to pursue computer science engineering. Locked up in the land of politics, beef, and football, I finally realised there's more to life than speed dating.