‘Call me as soon as you get home,’ she chimed.
‘When have I not?’ said the other, assuring her.
This was the daily conversation they had before leaving for home from school. Eight hours of school, shared classrooms, playtime, and several other activities wasn’t clearly enough for them. They had to catch up even more. Words poured out like never-ending fountains. Secrets were disclosed, hilarity recreated over and over again, and gossips made. They were always together.
Two years later they went to different schools for their higher secondary exams; the boards were different too. Hence, their phone conversations only increased from then on. New stories and old, miserable and happy stories, and on and on it went.
They met very frequently. It never dawned on them that soon their worlds would change. For, university life is completely different and friends may explore new areas and drift apart. They did. But, they still came back to each other and being in the same city helped. However, in 2008, one went to a university in Delhi. A student’s pocket money isn’t such that one can call up that frequently. They met only when they were in the same city. Again, new revelations filled their evenings. They met when the other returned home for her vacations. They shouted, screamed and volleyed with each other. No power in the universe could keep them apart.
Different schools, different universities, different cities, different countries—now she is in Canada. It has been a twenty-three-year long friendship with its own share of ups and downs. But here they are—one, a mother of a eight month old; and the other happily settled with her husband, who’s a gem of a guy.
It is damn difficult to match their times; even though their phones cry out to connect. And they don’t know when they would meet again.
…..
So long friend, my backbone, my guiding star, till we meet again and catch up on our eccentricities. Love is a hollow word when it comes to a person like you.
A senior to her by a year in school, she was her confidante and her go-to friend in every kind of trouble and ecstatic events. They travelled together extensively; spent endless moments cycling around; had their first smoke together (scared to death lest they met someone familiar in the quiet by-lane), and they did meet someone, and threw the unsmoked cigarette (they had money only for one more); they laughed in the dead of the night and shared their first titillating encounters with the opposite sex; they spent countless nights at each other’s places and almost every evening at either one’s place; and they dreamt on and leant on each other for support…
Distance couldn’t dampen a strand of their bond. They remain equally cracked and jolly till this day. They have sure moved on a lot from those school days but they have grown from strength to strength. What would they do without each other? Those hilarious moments—happy and truly crazy—drives them on in their struggles in their lives now. It will continue to do so. They dream about a time when they would again be able to spend time with each other every day without a care in the world!
…..
A lot of my firsts have been with her. Perhaps, one shouldn’t have these for a longer time than we had; lest they get spoilt.
We would crack the world with our irrational sense of logic, and our flamboyant laughter will drown the world’s sorrows.
srirakawrites 