All that jazz

I don't know if it's a good habit or a bad one, but the moment I step into my room, I must have music playing.

Last night, I came back from class, and instead of playing my usual hindi MP3s, I switched on the radio. The default station on my radio is Lush 99.5 - a station that plays jazz - a kind of jazz that reminds me of a very dear friend of mine - let's call him Jazzman - who now lives in a whole other country.

There are two kinds of friends who live in whole other countries. The first are those who have always lived in those countries, away from you (like my Chatur Chaar). And the second are those who went away from you to live in those countries.

In the first kind of long-distance friendships, there is little change in the degree of closeness you feel, perhaps because you have never been closer or more distant from what you are now. But in the second kind, after the friend goes away, you feel a change in the closeness - an increase or a decrease. You may wake up suddenly missing the person so bad that you can barely keep yourself from catching the next flight to that country, and then getting arrested at the airport 'cos apparently you were so excited about going there, you forgot to get a visa. Alternatively, you may find the closeness dying off, compared to the days when you met every other day, and hung out together.

I never really believed in long-distance friendships. Whenever I think of my friends from school days, I realise that I don't remember most of them too much. I only remember my crushes, and a few of what I referred to in school as my 'bestest friends'. Of course, it could be because I did not have 'that one school' imprinted in my memory. The seven schools I studied in have kinda mixed things up in my head. I do not have any friends I "grew up with" or "hung out with for years", because as soon as I found some friends, Dad had to move to a brand new city in a brand new state. So I just accepted it as a part of life that when people go away from you, or when you go away from them, you don't feel that close to them anymore.

But my friendships with some people, particularly Jazzman, seems to defy my own theory.

It's been such a long time since he left Singapore. And yet, the closeness I feel with him has not changed in any way. My friendship with him gives me faith that perhaps, once in a while, physical distances really do not matter. The amazing thing is even when he was in Singapore, we met up only once in a while, and rarely called each other. We don't even know each other's deepest darkest secrets. He doesn't tell me everything and I don't tell him everything. We don't have to. Even now, we don't email or call each other often, and yet, I have never felt us distancing away from each other, the way I feel with others I have left behind, or who have left me behind.

I guess some people just stay on even after they've gone away from our lives to create their own.

And when they go, they take a little piece of our heart with them.

And sometimes, they take a little more than that.

Dude, where're my DVDs?