Sometimes - specially when I am too bored even to read a book - I get the feeling that I should be more social. You know, go out with friends (lots of them), party, visit people, be nice to them... do everything that social people usually do. I see smiling and laughing faces - usually in pubs, discs and restaurants - looking at me from photographs, in attempts to remind me of what I am missing out on. There are a few twitches of doubt within. Why on earth am I not in those photographs?

A few more of those photographs later, I am itching to do something else - anything else. And no, it's not because the twitching doubt got worse.

The years have made me very (almost irritatingly) picky. I am picky about everything - clothes, shoes, books, the colour of my wall, my work and... gradually I realised... my friends. There was a time - long time back, though - when I would move in a group. That's where I felt comfortable. I wanted to be liked.

Somewhere down the line, I felt that it was not worth it. And now I firmly believe it. I get bored of the wrong human company faster than any other thing in the world.

As school turned to college and college to post-graduation, I let go of some of my closest friends without a morsel of regret or doubt. I knew I was better off, if not happier, without them. It was made easier, I think, by the fact that I was never really emotionally dependent on any of them for anything.

The friends that I have today may not be in the same city or even in the same time zone. We may not be in touch for days. And yet, they are some of the best people I have ever known.

Those who were shaken off were crud.