Mind of my Stroked Brain

Some time back I wrote about my passport country. My nationality.  As I think about it, I am physically rooted in these coordinates, but rarely in one place. It's usually ABC from Australia, CNA from Singapore, NDTV/ India Today from India, Al Jazeera from Doha, TRT from Istanbul, DW from Germany, France24 from France, EuroNews/RT from UK, ABC USA and WION from all over the world. I am dwelling in YouTube mostly. frequently visiting Netflix. Prime sometimes or Disney. I have permits for a few more Island nations but rarely visit them. Most of my remaining time is online - one thing or another. Physical national boundaries exit but have fully blurred. I am actually a citizen of Google. Resident of WhatsApp, regularly visit Amazon and occasionally I take trips to Microsoft land. I have heard Instagram and Tic Toc are very entertaining places. Most visitors settle there. But somehow, I have never been there. I have a visa for FB and LinkedIn, but I am bored by those places and don...

Some days back, a friend of mine, from my pre-university days, messaged me on whatsapp. We chatted about old times, the lecturers, how much we had fun ragging them, etc. We also chatted about mutual friends, what they are doing now, etc. We chatted about the families, kids, school, etc. It was a bit asynchronous also, so it was all throughout the day. It was all fine, but by night, I could sense a growing impatience, a mild irritation in me, for not once did he enquire about how I was coping after the stroke. He obviously had contacted me after almost a decade as he must have found out I am whatsapp-ing now. He was not addressing the white elephant but was beating around the bush. Later he said he was coming to Bangalore and suggested that we catch up for coffee and reminisce old times. That's when the penny dropped for us both. He really didn't know. He was not not avoiding the conversation.  I told him about the stroke blah blah blah and he apologized blah blah blah, all good...