Art of Friendship.

For me friends were just another set of people who lived elsewhere with different parents – whom I could talk to during class and play with  during breaks. They just are there when i see them and I dont care where when I dont. 

When i started caring, I found myself entangled in emotional webs any time i step                       
into a new place. There were “friends”, “only mine” friends or
“mine too” friends.

“Friends” were all those who smothered you with compliments.

 ”Only mine” friends were those to whom you talked too much and just for
that sin you expected the penance of them talking only to you.

and “mine too” version were those great looking,
exceptionally talented, college famous personalities
who happened to have a casual chat to which you’d cling on
for your life and say “guess what we spoke about the other day…yeah we r
tht close you know!!”

Im inviting trouble when I say Noor is my ‘best’ friend. She doesnt even know the existence of this space and other
close friends consistently visit here So let me put it this way..If there is a way of friendship she was my ‘Noor’.

The streak of light that taught me what that bond was all about.

I never realized what friendship was until the day i saw tears in her eyes for a situation that I was going through. Before I could cry or complain about it..i saw her eyes moisten and wondered whatever in the world that would be for. I never realized the meaning of the bond till I found myself screaming & crying out of joy for a beautiful victory of hers. She made me realize that being friends just doesnt mean hanging out together but going out of your way to think for the other.

We had seperate ‘gangs’ I guess..she being the ’sort of celebrity’ and me being a ‘nerd’. But she somehow would have thought and sorted out almost all the problems I have managed to create.  She, more than me knew I had talents in one arena and areas of improvement in another. And suddenly friendship for me never just stopped in having a blast together but being there for each other.

Yet we did have a blast together in our own way. We would drool over people we thought were handsome and play pranks on others who thought themselves great. Most of the teachers mistook us to be great listeners & attentive/obedient students when actually we would have escaped through the back door when we saw some lecturers come through the front.  No we wouldnt let that tarnish our image, we would walk upto our respective favourite professors and ask unnecessary doubts. If it’s her favourite, she’d ask the questions and I just need to tag along and vice versa. And yeah almost all the pranks that college life normally bless our lives with!

I guess Ive always tried to put up my best ‘me’ in front of others till then. Kind of wearing the best dress when you go out. With her, I have actually voiced out the worst ’self-criticism’ that ever run across my brains. I never resented being a blabber mouth or a boring mute. It really dint seem to matter. Coz then there was one person in the wole wide world who accepted me with all the flaws I could ever imagine.

It has been 9 years now. We have seen each other grow, take different fields, stride different paths. Have seen different people cross our lives and been there for each other through thick and thin. And today things that I wouldnt dare to look into a mirror and talk out, I guess Id call her up and speak.

I had thought of writing an ode to her on the eve of her birthday. You all know that procrastination is just another word for a libran like me..by now. Nyways “better late than never” as someone (probably like me) put it. So let this be now when I miss those innoce days of friendship in the daily grind, this day when people step out as swiftly as they step in with more wounds than warmth. This age when friendship has no space or time.

If I do have friends today or rather people who value my friendship, I guess I owe it to her. Coz she was a walking/talking book on the “Art of Friendship” for me

 For her I dedicate this line which has stayed with me long after I finished the book..with a seemingly equal passion with which the author must have written it…

For you, a thousand times over….