I like.     

The text appeared in a message on my Facebook page: “Are you Kalyani from Lady Irwin School? Please, please say yes!” I stared at the computer screen uncomprehendingly. The message came from……..Rachna!!! One of the two "best friends" I had in school, who I had last met in 1983, and who, I thought, I would never ever meet again. There was a phone number too, and within seconds, we were squealing with happiness; our tears, words, and laughter all getting into each other’s way.

Marc Zuckerberg has no idea that a woman thousands of miles away and on the wrong side of fifty thanks him over and over again for something he did back in 2004. That light bulb moment in which five grad students at Harvard conceptualized Facebook, led to one of the most interesting innovations ever. It is fitting indeed that Menlo Park, where Facebook is headquartered, shares its name with the town in which Thomas Edison invented the incandescent light bulb – another game changer.

However, this isn't an article about splendid inventions or super brilliant inventors. It’s much more mundane than that. It’s my little ode, my personal vote of thanks to the social networking site that brought back into my orbit those precious friends who had disappeared from my universe for nearly three decades.

When, in 1984, we left Delhi for Tripoli, Libya, little did I know that I would become “communicatively-challenged” during my stay there. Letters would take weeks to reach (if at all!) and telephones would be the last word in luxury. Back then, computers and the internet were in the neo-natal stage of existence. The direct consequence of this pariah status was that over seven years, I gradually, and then completely, lost touch with all my friends. It didn't help that most of them got married while I was away. Names, addresses, and telephone numbers changed irrevocably, and familiar identities were completely erased. When we returned to India and settled down in Pune, far away from Delhi, the isolation from my friends was complete. Frankly, it didn't matter terribly. My days were filled with looking after my own two kids and the hundreds on lease in school. Wonderful new friends were made (lots of them!), and I soon gave them a special place in my heart.

Then, unexpectedly and out of the blue, came the message on Facebook. I accepted the “Friends Request” and with that one click, I became a time traveler. Through a virtual world, I entered another that had been left behind a few decades ago. Friends’ lists were scanned for familiar first names, tentative leads got translated into euphoric discoveries, and very soon, eighty five of us in the batch of ’79 were connected on Facebook. Actually meeting up each other would take time. At least a third of the girls had reached foreign shores, and the rest were scattered all over the country. There was one space, though, which was our own and which would help us transcend intercontinental distances and varying time zones – our FB group page of LIS ‘79. We pored over each other’s photographs, clicking on them to increase their visibility; frantically searching the colored images of self-assured, cheerful looking middle aged women for traces of the friends we knew. Where were the gawky, awkward young girls with oily hair tied in two braids, worrying more about the acne on their faces than what their future held out for them? In the list, there were IAS officers, a representative at the UN, doctors, a VP in Infy, journalists, home makers, a scientist with CSIR, entrepreneurs, software professionals, professors, and teachers…... We rejoiced in the way all of us had metamorphosed over the years, but honestly, it didn't matter a whit. Who we were, what our husbands or children did, and whether we had tasted success, were all non-issues. All that mattered was that, miraculously, we had rediscovered a precious time and a priceless bond. At will and with a click, we could exit our homes and families, enter our school gates and our classrooms and be “girls” once again.

Today, we log in to Facebook and visit each other on our page at least once a week. Old memories are dusted out, advice is asked for and given, pictures are shared, humorous teacher anecdotes are revisited, witticisms exchanged, our children’s success celebrated, and the loss of a parent mourned. Tomorrow, there may be another “avatar” of Facebook or another technology that may make it redundant. For eighty five of us, though, it will continue to be the magic lamp whose incandescence helps us find the way to some of the most beautiful days of our lives.