Friends always keep our spirits bright and help us stay positive even when things don’t go as per plan. You can find a friend in anyone around you, a shopkeeper at your favourite store, a security guard you greet every day on your way to work, friends at school or workplace.

But, there is an exceptional type of friendship, my son doesn’t believe in it - long distance friends.

Right now in my life, other than my family - my husband and son, I have one person who I can call “close” to me, a person with whom who I can share any minute details about any and everything. She doesn’t reside in Dubai, she lives in the suburbs of Maharashtra - thousands of miles from Dubai, I have known her for the last 40 or more years in my life. We became friends in school. Tas, was only another classmate back during my high school days in Mumbai. We lost complete contact after college. Thanks to the WhatsApp messenger, the network that helped me connect with her again.

A lovely trip planned by a group of classmates, to the resort town of Manali, Himachal Pradesh was the beginning to our beautiful bond.

This trip brought us closer after several friends thought of backing out with various excuses, leaving only the two of us. It almost led us to cancel our trip. But she motivated me as she said: “The two of us are enough.” It was what; I later called “the breakthrough trip”.

From then we kept in touch regularly.

This was when I realised, that life introduces us to many people with whom we develop different relationships and friendships, but some of these friends are just too special. We bond with them mentally, regardless of their race, caste, religion, nationality or personality. This bond is very rare and distance does not ever become the reason for it to feel any diffrent or any less special.

- The reader is a mother based in Dubai