The friend who caused me to write this post does not know that I am writing. He doesn’t even know that I am affected by his plight. He will of course never get to read it. Two reasons
- He is not on the list of people who get notified as and when I post
- I am not going to tell him that I wrote this stuff
Several years ago, I had a friend. When I say, I had, I mean I had. I no longer have unless I am somebody who doesn’t believe in death.
Now this friend of mine was indeed a very close friend. I never had before and after come across someone who is quite like her. She was a completely different person altogether. Her values, her humour, her style, and her manners were unlike anybody else.
She was perhaps not the unique person I imagined her to be but being my friend, according to me and in my sense of the word, is being unique.
We studied together for two years. We were friends for just more than a year but those were the days we were young and green and it did not take us ages to recognize best friends.
I left to join a graduate course in commerce in a college and she stayed back to make one more attempt for the Medical Entrance test (EAMCET - Engineering, Agriculture and Medicine Common Entrance Test). We talked often. I always wanted her to write to me. She, being what she was, never of course wrote and today I am left with nothing from her to read and linger in reminiscence.
As usual I called her one early morning at 6:15 for I was in a hurry to attend a training class for my ACS course which of course I never completed. Her uncle took the call and told me that she is not there. I called her hostel the day before and they said she went home on grounds of ill health I asked if she was doing fine as the people at the hostel told me that she was not well. He said that she passed away. I did not ask how and what. I went numb. I went to the class and came back home and had the upma my mother made and slept the whole day. I wept in the evening. I prayed to wake up next morning and discover that this is a dreadful dream and it will never come true. No dream it was! It was the bitter truth! My father offered to take me to her place but I was reluctant to go. I wept for months after that and in the night I had the wildest of dreams. After I reconciled to that idea that she is gone for good and dead people do not come back after all, I prayed for peace.
After all these years, I still find tears in my eyes when I think of her or I hear the song I often sung for her. She never liked it though. I almost always sang some note wrong.
I often wonder if she was thinking of me when this dreadful thing happened. The car in which she was traveling with her father and her father’s friend met with an accident and the three of them along with the driver were killed. I now know that she is not coming back. I also believe that she found peace in those last moments of pain, alarm, and agony.
I do not know what to do or think. I am not very wise and I still wish she were back. I want to talk to her about everything that happened to me after she left. I want to talk about my new friends, my new outlook in life, my marriage, my future. I know she is not coming back. None the less, I want her back.
