Meeting old friends

In this dream, I was in Bombay, or that's what it seemed like. The city was home to one of my friends from school, and as far as I could remember, he was from there. The reason for my apparent confusion is the fact that this dream version of Bombay appeared to be a mixture of parts of downtown Honolulu and snippets of the cute, closely-knit alleys of small-town Europe. But, like I was saying, this was where my friend KA was from, so I suppose it had to be Bombay, albeit slightly modified.

We were in KA's apartment. I had just arrived from out of town, and I was using this time to freshen up before we went out to see what the city had on offer. As soon as I was ready, and after noticing that KA was obviously doing well for himself, as evidenced by his apartment muy largo, we went to a nearby coffee shop. While there, I ran into another friend from school, SMC. It was nice to catch up, and although this gathering wouldn't really have happened back in school, the fact that it was happening now was a sign that we had all "grown up" so as not to let the idiocies of old influence our current day interaction.

Then, cut to a short while later, I'm walking down the street of what seems to be a small but very colorful lane, replete with tall, narrow, 2- and 3-storey buildings reminiscent of small-town Europe. I seem to be trying to find a place to eat, or at least to get a cup of coffee. Suddenly, glancing into the window of a cafe as I pass by, I notice another friend, this time though, a friend from college. R is sitting down to a sandwich and some coffee when I burst through the door and greet him loudly, very unbecoming of me, and rather jarring in terms of the overall subdued atmosphere of the cafe. We proceed to catch up briefly before making plans to meet up later for dinner with KA and SMC.

Now, the dream wasn't particularly interesting, not even with the fused setting, or the seemingly normal chain of events. What was intriguing was the fact that I haven't seen many of these people in over a decade. When I say "seen" I mean I haven't had any contact with any of these people. For example, it's been close to 12 years since I heard from or about KA, and with SMC and R, it's been 10 years, give or take a month. To suddenly dream of all these people, individually and with a large amount of on-screen time in my dream was surprising, to say the least.