The joy of wasting time together
The year is 1992. My best friend is Arnold and he is everything I could aspire to be: smarter, funnier and loved. Although there are many instances I recall vividly about our time together from kindergarten to second standard—his family moved to Bhayandar soon after—my favourite remains the time we spent during the summer vacation of ‘92. I used to go to his place and spend almost the entire day, playing various indoor games, mostly upstairs, in the balcony. If you ask me to define perfection, I would point to those moments spent together with him—along with his charming parents and adorable elder sister Ruby—without a hint of worry from the real world that existed outside that balcony. A day before they left, he hugged me tightly and cried, and then I started crying, and then we both looked like idiots who didn’t know that they were never going to meet again.
The year is 1997. My best friend is Zameel and he isn’t really a bright student (compared to me) but what he lacked in academics, he made it up in his calming personality and deadpan humour. We were both mad about cricket and after school, in the afternoon, we used to assemble at Lal Maidan and play bat-ball—a unique form of gully cricket where two players were enough; one to bat and another bowl/field—until just about half an hour before evening tuition time. Under the merciless sun that roasted our brown skins, we pretended to be world-class cricketers, imitating bowlers and batsmen of our times, and discussed nothing but cricket. Pollock. Sachin. By the end of the year, our friendship reached its boundary: his folks moved to Mumbra and as is my record with keeping up with the frendashians, I never saw him again. But our endless innings in Cheeta Camp are the stuff of legend nobody knows about.
The year is 2002. My best friend is Aamir and we are both awaiting the results of our 10th standard board exams. Every evening, we used to walk to Trombay jetty, talking about everything under the sky, and we used to laugh a lot, making silly jokes, mature observations about the sky and sea-kissed sunset, sharing trivias we stole from NatGeo, and feeling brilliant about ourselves. Gorgeous wastage of time. It’s not everyday you get a friend like him: he genuinely cared and wanted the best for me. Our evening walks in the summer of 2002, followed by sweet mawa samosas and falooda (or sugarcane juice), kept me oblivious to the fact that I’ll be the one leaving home soon. Results: I scored 80% and Aamir got 81%; he chose to do engineering diploma in Mumbai while I moved to Nashik for a (cheaper) govt seat. In the meantime, my family moved to Sanpada but I remained in touch with Aamir for a bit.
The year is 2007. My best friend is Anu and it’s funny that we randomly bumped into each other in an internet cafe. Turned out his family also moved to Sanpada after school. Although we we were classmates earlier, we weren’t fond of each other back then. In that cafe, we learned that we were both obsessed with cinema. And that kicked off an immersive journey, laced by snail-paced torrents, and endless chats about our preferred movies/filmmakers, sharing magazines and news clippings, ceaseless reccos from the golden days of cinema, and attending free screenings and film festivals. Without his companionship, I don’t think my passion for the visual medium would have blossomed at all, and there is no way I’d have segued into entertainment journalism either. Fortunately, I am still in touch with him and he happens to be one of the very few friends who attended my wedding.
The year is 2012. My best friend is Tushar and we are both in different line of work now: me a budding film journalist while he was fast embracing his entrepreneurial spirit. Before this stage, we had worked together for four years in business transcription. We were both known for our non-absenteeism and excellent work ethic. During childhood, time moves slowly and you end up stretching out the day a lot with your friends. When you are fully grown, time appears limited and there is so much left to do, and that’s when you get to know who you deliberately spend a lot of time with. In my case, it had to be Tushar because we both made sincere attempts to meet each other—along with Anu and my brother Sai, sometimes—as often as possible, not only during weekends but also weekdays. He was always there: solid, empathetic and humorous. No situation could bog him down, and that remains the case to this day.
The year is 2017. My best friend is Akshar and I am residing in Gurgaon with some of the coolest people I’ve ever met. Everyday, I woke up and was raring to go to office so that I could sit next to friends who made me laugh and help me ignore my factory setting existential crisis. From the bunch, I appreciated Akshar the most because I’d had learned in his absence that you need someone like him to steer you away from things that are unimportant. A perfect barometer in both personal and professional space. So, what is important? Well… family, friends, fun, food and films. Remarkably sorted for his age. The reason I spent six wonderful years at Zomato had a lot to do with getting to spend so much time with this gifted man-child. To be able to clock upwards of 10 hours in office and then many more during Friday evening gatherings, or some weekend plans, was nothing less than bliss for someone like me. Selective anti-social beings can’t ask for a better friend to waste time with.
The year is 2022. My best friend is Karan and he happens to hail from the city where I’ve been living for the past two years. Although he is based out of Mumbai, he visits his hometown once every two months or so. Given my lack of offline interaction with fellow humans, I wish he’d operated in Mangalore but then, that’s life. You can’t ask for too much time either. His one-sided love for Mumbai is a constant reminder that, at the crux of our being, we only want a friend to spend some extra time with, on topics that are anyway useless. To his credit, whether he is walking through Mohammed Ali Road or Kala Ghoda, whether he is belting pav-bhaji on the street or sipping irani chai at an old cafe on his own, he seems content. Being an adman, his language can be necessarily objective and unnecessarily poetic; yet, it’s a delight to discuss human behaviour, culture and why there won’t be another Kantara again.