Lemon rice in disguise.

 Have you ever had lemon rice? Well.... I did, a few times or many times I guess I just don't remember exactly, a friend of mine from APS Ferozpur used to bring it for lunch. When I was in second grade I befriended these two girls, they were South Indian namely Megha and Avantika, they both were fun and I loved being with them. Megha was all like the mommy of the squad kind of girl while Avantika was the kid, ah! Indeed she was the naughtiest, she didn't know Hindi both spoken and written but the best part was she never let that became a hurdle between us at all, the way she managed to find ways to talk to me were brilliant but one of the best one was Megha, Megha herself being a moderate Hindi speaker used to act as an interpreter between us, she never got fed up with being the interpreter though, all this shows how eager a person could be to make things happen that seem possibly harder than the others. We used to sit together in class, have lunch with each other everyday while sitting on the grass in the playground and enjoying the beauty of the campus quite often, we had a great time together for a period of 2 years before my dad got transferred to another place and we moved away from Punjab. Being the daughter of an army personnel , I had a lot of friends of all sorts in my childhood from each and every corner of our country, every army brat knows this as the perk of being the child of an army man but along with that came the sorrow of separation from these friends after every 2-3 years at most. I loved making friends since the beginning but being a child I was very shy in person and still managed to make great friends from whom I learnt a lots of fascinating things. Today I tried to prepare lemon rice for the first time, FYI I'm 21 now. I was hoping for the best and it turned out quite delicious, the first spoonful of rice that I had, made the nostalgia hit so hard, I just can't explain. All of a sudden I started missing both of them dearly and wished that for once I could meet them again and sit there on the grass and talk endlessly with Megha the interpreter and her boss, lol. I'm sure Avantika might have learnt how to talk in Hindi and understand it too, she was pretty smart back then. I just want both of them to know that how much I miss them. Why is it still so hard to move on from such friendships? It's been more than a decade now and I still remember them, miss them. Do they remember me? Do they ever think of me and smile? Do they miss me? I don't know, but I'm sure there are others like me who still can't get over the fact that they have lost such lovely friends because of their father's profession, we are humans and we tend to be attached to others who were a part of our lives once and we embrace their memories as much as we embraced their presence. We all are a book full of pages that are filled with such people some pages are still fresh and crisp while the others have degraded or started to degrade with time, things written there are not comprehendable. Such old memories fade away from our minds with the years passing by yet things like lemon rice still manage to keep them alive in our hearts. So tell me what is it that reminds you of your dear long lost friend? It could be anything a token of friendship, food, a place, a book, a habit of yours, etc.