The protagonist of this story recently learned that one of his closest friends from childhood had passed away a decade ago. He often saw him in his dreams from school days, where boys ran around like fools for no good reason while the girls their age stayed poised, but he never once woke up and bothered to search for his whereabouts on Facebook. Maybe out of laziness, maybe out of indifference. Or, probably, he knew there was no point. Shyness is an incurable disease. Either way, he remained oblivious to the fact that his friend was no more. It’s a strange feeling, isn’t it, to lose a friend and then learn about it 10 years too late?
But then, loss isn’t a foreign concept to our protagonist. Like most members of his species, he has lost a lot in his lifetime. He is an expert in this field. A contender for the world championship of loss. Admittedly, he keeps losing without any checks and balances. He first lost his drive to make it big in his career, and then his purpose, and then, slowly, the very meaning of his existence. Not to mention, the love of his life. Not to highlight, even his nonexistent sex life. Quite an empty soul, our hero. In a nutshell, he is a pitiful loser. Except that he hates it when others take pity on him. He prefers to hide his insecurities behind his loaded eyebags.
Anyhow, if we were to step back into his past and page through his innocent days, we’ll notice that he was indeed happy. Yes, at the end of each academic year, his friends somehow always moved onto another city, leaving him stranded like a crow in monsoon, but overall, he always managed to find new friends, only for them to move on, far away from him, eventually. It became a pattern after a while. So, as a defense mechanism, he decided that he would start abandoning others before they did the same to him.
Nice try, champ.
Making friends is not easy. Especially when you are truly seeking friendship. If you are a harmless person, chances are you will be considered a friend but not entirely. Our protagonist understood this distinction in his early adulthood days. Silent types have it difficult in an otherwise loud world. As a result, he remained cautious of his so-called friends. None of them invited him to their homes. Their friendship was granted with terms and conditions: restricted to office and related to common grounds/interests.
Thank you very much.
Those who manage to strike deep friendships—the sort where you can genuinely afford to know each other—don’t seem to appreciate what they’ve got. There are billions of people around you, and yet, by some strange twist of events, you ended up as friends with a handful. If this isn’t magic, what is? And if you stick around with each other, without turning into faint memories and awkward silences, then nothing like it. The essence of friendship is in being with each other: finding the time and energy to spend with/on each other. No bond survives distance with respect to time.
Nope, sorry.
Anyway, coming back to our sorry protagonist, he lost a friend and didn’t even know about it. A case of delayed loss. Since his brain wasn’t aware of what happened, it continued to direct his dreams with a certain flair of longing for a past that wasn’t perfect. He continued to see him in his sleep several times in recent memory. Hence, all those school day dreams of boys chasing each other, and reaching exam halls a bit too late, and getting punished by getting kneed outside the classroom. There were strange dreams as well, the kind where you are playing football or something and suddenly, maggots and ticks show up.
Childhood was a quaint village at best. The dreams regarding childhood are worse. If only we knew back then that time moves slowly for children. Grownups are literally swinging from one month to another at the speed of a wink. Our hero didn’t know better, obviously. Things happen to him at their own sweet pace.
On learning about the demise of his old friend, he made some inquiries though, much against his personality. Maybe this loss shook him for real. Turns out there was a car accident and the cause of the death was conclusive. No mystery there. But he did learn that his friend passed away on the date he was born. On his 29th birthday, to be accurate. Just like Mrs. Jinnah. Apparently, the whole family was heading to a celebratory dinner at their favourite spot. They never reached their destination that night and to this day, none of the family members ever visited that restaurant again. Funny how a merry event can quickly turn into a pending note of despair.
Our hero kept thinking about his friend, about the 19 years that he didn’t see him at all, and then the 10 years that he didn’t exist at all. He also wondered whether his friend ever thought of him when he was around, after they were separated in 1996. Did he ever talk about him? Was he mentioned in the list of closest friends? Or did he ever search our protagonist’s name on Facebook? Who knows?
As a benefit of doubt, he assumed that most of us live in each other’s memories, in the balcony of our minds, safely tucked away from public scrutiny. We don’t reach out to each other although we remain concerned and caring. We look at birds and animals only to be amazed by their uninterrupted silences, while completely overlooking the silence that we dwell in. We are silent creatures too but we are fooled by our words. Most of our conversations are silent because they happen inside our skull. Small surprise we show up in each other’s dreams uninvited. And sometimes, even after we are long gone from this planet.
Feeling too much of anything & everything feels like a curse. I love it and hate it at the same time.
Don't know why am I writing this under this post. nope no idea.