You have a group chat somewhere on your phone. It could be called Class of 2019 Hostel Boys Forever or The Squad Final Final. The group picture is a messy photo taken at your send off party and the last time there was any real activity in this group was months ago. It might be a Happy Birthday message with 17 likes, or it could be a meme screenshot with no text.
However, every few months some random person will type:
Hey guys, let’s get together sometime.
Yes We should have done this ages ago.
Absolutely.
Let’s plan something.
I’ll see what I can do.
And nothing happens. We have the never to be reunion.
You’re not alone in feeling this is a cruel reality. It doesn’t mean your friends don’t care about you
The Group That Turned Into An Archive
Your group chat has transformed into an archive. You have the audio messages you sent on the bus, the photo you took that night the power cuts happened, and the arguments you had about who left the fan on. If you scroll up far enough you’ll find a version of you that you won’t recognise. They type everything in lowercase, they use stickers that no one uses now and they’re super confident about their future.
Most of us won’t leave the group because we don’t want to shut this part of our lives down. We’ve turned it into a quiet archive and keep it muted. Occasionally we’ll pop in.
Planning the never to be reunion is simply the yearly open day for your archive.
Why The Reunion Never Actually Happens? Let’s be real here.
They’re all in different cities, time zones and life stages. One of them has moved to Bengaluru for work, one is doing their masters in Chicago, one has just had a baby and one is slowly sinking under the pressure of rent/EMIs/student loans.
Expectations are too high. We imagine that we’ll have a perfect weekend together, everyone will be there, we’ll all dress the same, have a fancy meal and take a group photo in golden hour. As this isn’t possible, nothing happens.
It’s embarrassing. What if we don’t laugh at the same jokes? What if we’ve all changed? What if we don’t know the person we were closest to? Sometimes it’s safer to keep it to “someday”.
There are too many people. There are 25 people in this group so it takes ages to decide anything. Someone throws a comment with an emoji, someone suggests a date that no one pays attention to and the conversation gets lost in a forwarded good morning from your uncle that somehow ended up in the group.
What The Reunion Actually Means?
Notice that no one ever puts the message “let’s meet up!” in a group they don’t care about. This is a little beacon in the dark. It means I still think about you, I still know who we were and I’d like to get close to you again.
For Indian Gen Z, reunions mean a lot more. Many of us grew up in a small group of friends at school/hostel and they became family. We’ve seen everyone go their separate ways for coaching, college, work and visas. For American Gen Z, everyone goes their separate ways at graduation. They’re all at different campuses, cities and time frames. Your hometown becomes somewhere you visit rather than live.
Your WhatsApp group might seem inactive or dead, but it is full of people from an entire period of your life. All the jokes, late night conversations and people who have gotten to know you.
– Aira 🌿
