Elevator friendship

Hello, :-)
I recently found that that there is something called elevator friendship. Just like train friendship. Or like people whom you meet in bus or aeroplane. You chat with them in a very friendly way, with full involvement and then forget them. They are just meant for short period of time. Elevator friendship is like that, you enter an elevator (lift) and say hello, good morning to whomever inside and they give a smile while coming out. Or tell a good bye. Sometimes not even that. No hello or good bye. However people forget the fact that your very life can end inside that elevator if things goes wrong and the person inside the elevator would be your death companion :-). So why not a Hello and a good bye.
When I was studying in the Netherlands, I used to meet a professor every day in the elevator. A former PhD of my supervisor Prof. Keunen, a cumlaude, a genius and a well liked human being by everyone in that lab. Someone like Sachin Tendulkar in Microbiology research. Although I don’t like such kinds, as they think too much of themselves, this man was very nice. Slowly our friendship grew while speaking to each other in the elevator. His words used to encourage me so much. One fine day I came to know that he became mentally ill because of over working and stress. That brought a big shock inside me. I just could not believe that how a tower can collapse like this, just overnight and how vulnerable our lives can be. However just few months before my PhD defence he came back, normal and healthy. He attended my research defence and said to me "RAJI, that was splendid, I never knew that you can be this bold and assertive". :-), after he moved my brother who was near me, repeated the same.
Sometimes no matter how close a person is, whether he/she knows you through meeting in the lift or life, they are still ignorant about you and vice versa. Finally its all the same, how differently you tag them. There is nothing wrong in tagging any relationship, if you respect each and every person you meet in your life. Well I said a good bye to that prof before I left Netherlands. Why not, even an elevator friendship deserves all the love and respect. Sometimes love is not even required, but respect makes you remember someone till the end.
While writing this I remember Tennyson’s poem Brook, where he would have ended the poem with "Men may come and Men may go':-). Waiting to join the river and finally the Ocean.

The Brook


I come from haunts of coot and hern,
I make a sudden sally
And sparkle out among the fern,
To bicker down a valley.

By thirty hills I hurry down,
Or slip between the ridges,
By twenty thorpes, a little town,
And half a hundred bridges.

Till last by Philip's farm I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

I chatter over stony ways,
In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles.

With many a curve my banks I fret
By many a field and fallow,
And many a fairy foreland set
With willow-weed and mallow.

I chatter, chatter, as I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

I wind about, and in and out,
With here a blossom sailing,
And here and there a lusty trout,
And here and there a grayling,

And here and there a foamy flake
Upon me, as I travel
With many a silvery waterbreak
Above the golden gravel,

And draw them all along, and flow
To join the brimming river
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

I steal by lawns and grassy plots,
I slide by hazel covers;
I move the sweet forget-me-nots
That grow for happy lovers.

I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,
Among my skimming swallows;
I make the netted sunbeam dance
Against my sandy shallows.

I murmur under moon and stars
In brambly wildernesses;
I linger by my shingly bars;
I loiter round my cresses;

And out again I curve and flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

Alfred Lord Tennyson