No, we aren’t trying to get back together with a friend after an unnecessary spat. We haven’t had words and cut off the call (the present-day equivalent of banging down the phone mid-argument). We are not trying to apologise for things we have said in the heat of the moment or make up for misunderstandings.

All we are trying to do is make up for lost time.

Because, for decades we just exchanged birthday and New Year cards with a little bit of a message inside, and when the practice of sending and receiving tangible cards disappeared, we adopted email cards, again with very little information about our lives. We were just too busy with our work and home and bringing up children and being involved in their studies and play and career choices to catch a breath.

But now, many of us are empty nesters. Our children and grandchildren are in distant places and despite the magical connectivity of the internet and all the apps that can live-stream their activities into our home, we still have plenty of time left over to muse about the old days and think of our old friends.

We are at last free to re-connect with them on closer terms than Facebook posts and comments on WhatsApp groups.

Thus, suddenly, we’re going in for longer emails — that actually look like the letters we used to exchange when we first went our different ways. At that time, the ones who left were homesick, the ones who stayed behind felt bereft — and we poured out our hearts on paper. Even the more reticent among us, who shied away from saying “I miss you madly — I wish I hadn’t decided to go to the other end of the world ...” or “I miss you madly — this place is wonderful, pack your bags and come here ...” did manage to write a lot about the new landscape, their new interests, their everyday life and their new routine and how different it was from what they were accustomed to, and a lot more.

Naturally, we responded in kind. We told our effusive friends how bland and lonely we found life without them; we told our reserved friends what we did at parties or get-togethers now that they were not around.

And when that first downswing of missing them was over, we filled our lives with other things and other people and we spent much less time communicating with them.

But now we can catch up again. We can plan reunions. What’s more, we don’t have to wait for those friends to return to Mother India on their triennial trip home, when they have to meet parents, uncles and aunts, cousins, siblings, nieces and nephews and their children and probably won’t have a spare moment to themselves, forget about that weekend in Khandala or Panchgani ...

Now we can meet up with them in other parts of the world — when they and we are the only persons around and we can rediscover the things that we had so enjoyed about each other’s company. We can also acquaint one another with the senior versions of ourselves — and we are relieved that there are no young ones of our families to see what happens to us when we let our hair down (especially since, if we are being literal, there is very little hair to let down at all)!

Lucky us if we are able to catch up on old friendships — and get on the path to new “improved” versions.

Our same old annoying traits may still irk our friends — and quite likely, in the intervening years, we have picked up a whole lot of other annoying habits.

Isn’t it comforting that the same old traits also delight us?

Cheryl Rao is a journalist based in India.