Arun and Me- A Brief History

Arun and I met in cyberspace, modern pen pals if you will. Then we became friends. And then we became best friends. We sure do intend to remain so for a long long time.

We share a hometown, a mother tongue and a remarkably similar childhood. But we met when we were both 25 and what really struck us instantly was our mutual love for travel. It is no surprise that the first time we met we drove to New York to move me and my carload of stuff to the city for the summer of 2008. We spent our very first day together walking around NYC until 3am.

We both love movies. We typically watch at least two movies every week. Believe me, we've watched some really bad ones. We were even crazy enough to wait in a line that ran around an entire block in Times Square to watch Dark Knight in the dead of the night on opening day.

We both have an alarming disregard for money. We once drove to Pennsylvania Dutch Country, but a tad too late to catch sight of the Amish folk who disappear into their homes at sun-down. We instead spent an unspeakable amount of money impulse-shopping at the local mall.

Other perpetuators of our wanderlust and our friendship are the photographer in Arun and the writer in me. And I daresay we are converting each other. Yesterday, thanks to my new found obsession with figuring out photography, we spent three hours clicking pictures in merely two galleries in the massive Museum of Natural History in NYC. Thanks to Arun's predicament of having to avert my obstinate disapproval, these days he diligently checks his blogs, emails and even his text messages for spelling and grammar.

We have our differences too. I use my phone strictly to make and receive calls and the occasional photograph. He calls his iPhone "Jesus" and suffers from withdrawal in its absence. We have a permanently active argument about the relative merits of comfort and efficiency. He ridicules my "MBA-ness" for my quest for efficiency. I blame his laziness for his craving for comfort. He lectures me on cars and gadgets. I bore him with book-talk and drag him through finance geekdom.

The proximity to each other we enjoy today is short lived. We have about six more months together in the US. But we have what we believe is a lifetime of travel, decades of great photography and an endless list of places and things to write about. Thus this blog! A memoir of our travels (together and not). A record of our crazy plans, many will be jinxed never to happen, we hope that at least some will come true. So join us as we go footloose on the freeways of the world!