....And a FRIEND indeed....

Being a writer (!) gives you the privilege of making yourself emotionally stable by allowing yourself to enter a cocoon and also gives you an opportunity to make yourself vulnerable by baring your soul. And it is at these moments that you look into your soul and as you give a glance to the life that you have lived and the path you have travelled, you come across a lot of people you want to thank and you come across a lot of people you want to thrash. Fortunately, I belong to the group of people who have more entries in the former category.

Family members obviously occupy the top positions (which they have to) and as you come a bit down to the section of friends, you look at the list and wonder why the hell they did everything that they ever did for you.

This post is for one such friend of mine who, to my utmost happiness, occupies a position above all my family members. And to underline his value, my life requires a rewind.

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When I started attending school as a kindergarten kid, making a huge fuss every morning all the way from my home to my school and then creating a ruckus at my school gate not willing to enter the school compound but was forcibly taken inside by our school security guard, there was only one person I liked in my entire school then – My kindergarten class teacher! I never really spoke with anyone at class and whenever I opened my mouth, the words were meant only for my class teacher.

Two grades later, I opened up a bit and within the blink of an eye, I became part of a gang of two girls and three boys. It was an age where unwanted fears had not begun filling up our minds or for that matter, our parent’s minds and we spent most of the time pinching each other, hitting one another and when opportunities presented themselves, even biting one another. We did not have relationship problems or parental misunderstandings to share back then and we were content with sharing our woes of an eraser gone missing or an action figure broken by accident.

Slowly as life moved forward and our trousers got replaced by pants, I found myself among a new set of people with my older gang disintegrating with the departure of two friends from our school. And the new gang no less fun than the older one, was a bit different as we had not only started attaining maturity at a physical level but also at an emotional level. Still, the movie-discussions-in-whispers during class hours, consoling one another for marks less scored in unit tests, teasing one another with very silly names like ‘mulla-mandri’ for instance and my most favourite – pulling the white ribbon tied to the well-folded hair of my very dear friend and earning the flaming furious look from her as she tied it again – all these made up my every single day of those pre-teen years of schooling.

About 3 years later, after we had had our first experience of a board exam, I found myself in a completely different surrounding. The occasional weekend visit to friends’ homes, visiting the movie theatre at least thrice a month, making fun of every girl that passed by, entering every shop in a mall and exiting it hours later empty-handed, standing at the KFC and McD counters and emptying our purses to find that we were four or five rupees short of paying the bill, taking very personally every attack on any of our friends by other students – we were a gang which represented any typical school gang of North Chennai. There was no place for girls but whenever any guy from our gang even slightly developed a liking for a girl, we made sure that the girl never ever spoke to the guy again – we were that good a set of friends.

And as things kept going at a breakneck speed, everything came to a sudden halt as I found myself leaving to an unknown town 300 kilometres away from Chennai to pursue my B.Tech degree, leaving every single friend of mine behind, however close they were at that time. I entered college not knowing whether I would get a set of friends as good as the ones at school (just like any other boy/girl) and was surprised to find a more fascinating and amazing set of friends (just like any other boy/girl). The journey with my new set of friends hasn’t ended and I wish that it would never end though the bunks and the canteen-lunches and the long-hours-of-useless-chats would end next year.

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I wondered for a moment after I typed the above part as to whether I was typing a piece about my friend or a piece about myself and my journey till college. But I know that the above part is important to understand the value of this guy in my life.

This guy never belonged to any of those gangs I mentioned above.

He was never a part of my first gang where we were all united by our innocence. He was never a part of my second gang where we were all united by our adolescence. He was never a part of my third gang where we were all united by our ebullience. And at present, he is not a part of my college gang where we are all united by our benevolence.

But he has been the most important person in my life ever since he walked into my fifth grade class at school, 10 years back.

The two of us were (and still are) never really the type to hang out together. A few days back when I had gone home, I searched all the folders in my laptop, my desktop computer and all over my entire photo collection for photos that had just the two of us. And the number of photographs I found out as a result of our 10 year long friendship – One!

Most of my cherished memories of school life are filled with lots of friends and this guy never really is in prominence in any of those memories. But not once do I think about school without remembering his face.

We have had fights. We have had arguments - some very long ones and some very silly ones. We have had several misunderstandings. And we have had long periods of time when we have never really spoken to each other. But whatever might have been the case, one text message would suffice and we would get back on track.

Whenever I face a crisis in my life, he is the first person I text to. Whenever I finish writing a story, he is the first person I mail to. Whenever I come across an appreciation or a laurel or a moment worth remembering, he is the first person I share it with.

I have thought about it often and have dismissed it as a possible proof for the ‘opposite poles attract’ law but for some reason, most of the friends in my friend-circle have exactly contrasting opinions, in comparison to me, with respect to most of the things – films, books, science and life in general. Though this would seem great most of the time for it would start a lot of debates, there have been many a time where I have wanted to share something intellectual or discuss rather than debate about art or sometimes even love and if there is someone I turned to in the past or would still turn to among my friends at these situations, it would definitely be this guy.

Whenever you share a few incidents from your life to other people, they start judging you and they start jumping to conclusions about who you are with the very few details they know about you. And this is one reason that I love this guy because he is someone who never ever judges me even for a moment though he is the only guy – the only person – who knows everything there is to know about me, be it on the academic side or the artistic side or the familial side or the romantic side.

A writer fails whenever he admits that he is unable to describe a particular moment or a feeling or a relationship for that matter. And I keep failing every time I try to describe our friendship.

How could you possibly describe a friendship between two friends where the two friends rarely hang out with one another but know everything there is to know about one another’s life?

How could you possibly describe a friendship between two friends where the two friends have their own close group of friends but whenever they want to share something very personally, resort to one another?

I couldn’t. And I also wouldn’t. I know that I would be failing as a writer but I wouldn’t care because for ten years, I have won as a friend.

Today, for his 22nd birthday, I decided that I would write a long and heart-wrenching piece about him and post it at midnight. As I started typing, I realized one thing – He has been the most difficult topic I have ever written on. I was under the assumption that words would flow like a river on its way to the sea but it has not been so. It has taken me 4 long hours to write this very simple piece. I wondered why.

And I got the answer as I read the piece again. I found that it did not have any interesting plot to hold one’s attention. I found that it did not have any exaggeration or fictionalization to make it entertaining. I found that this has been the most ordinary piece I have written till now, not offering any emotional feeling to the reader, be it a smile or a tear or a tinge of anger. And as I wondered again as to why this was so, I got the answer.

This has been one of the most honest pieces (third most honest, to be exact) of writing I have written till now.

And I felt happy when I realized it. I also felt happy when I read this piece again because it exactly represents our friendship – simple yet solid, ordinary yet emotional, boring yet absorbing and most importantly, honest and heartfelt.

My dear friend, I don’t know where you would rank this among all the other gifts I have given you. But to me, this is the truest and the purest gift from my side.

Hope you liked it!

And of course, Happy Birthday!

P.S.: I have already mentioned it once in the piece but I need to say it again. As I proof-read the piece, to my horrifying surprise, I found that the piece contains more lines about me than about you to whom this piece is dedicated to. I guess I made a mistake. I decided to write about you and ended up writing more about myself. Perhaps, for my birthday, I will try writing about myself. I am sure it would contain more lines about you!!