Sunday, May 1, 2011

FRIENDS

Being in a city you hardly know – or one where hardly anyone knows you – can give you the kind of freedom where you can do things as simple as taking a walk with a guy at half past eleven in the night. It’s not like you are doing something rather blasphemous, neither is it that you are acting careless or being impulsive. But somehow you wouldn’t do that in your hometown.

On a particularly starry night, Falon was walking down an almost deserted road with her best buddy in this strange town she was only beginning to learn and like. She kept asking Aditya where they were going; but Aditya just kept on talking and kept on walking.

“Tum kitna sochti ho Falon!” (You think too much Falon) he exclaimed turning back to look at her. He kept walking backwards. “Aren’t you having a good time?”

“I am Aditya. I would have gone straight home from the restaurant if I wasn’t.”

“Then keep walking!” he said.

“Giroge,” Falon warned (You’ll fall).

“Nahi girunga,” Aditya said (No I won’t), and almost the next minute he had landed square on his butt.

Falon burst out laughing and gave Aditya a hand to get up.

“Ooouww,” Aditya moaned as he slowly got up. He took one look at Falon and immediately added – “I know you told me, don’t go and say it again.”

“Don’t wanna walk?” Falon said.

“Nah,” Aditya replied.

“Where were we going anyway?” Falon asked.

“Well, there is this kind of a playground close-by that kids in the neighbourhood use as a cricket-field. It’s just an open area actually, nothing great. But there are not too many trees and all, so the sky really looks beautiful from there. We could have gone and just sat for a while and…”

“And what?” Falon prompted.

Aditya reached inside his bag-pack and pulled out a bottle of wine.

“Oh come on! I can’t let you sit here after showing me that! We have to go! The place can’t be so far away now, can it? We’ve been walking for almost twenty minutes! And you –“

“Okay okay! We’ll go!” Aditya said, throwing his hands up. “Crack pot,” Aditya said and looked at Falon out of the corner of his eyes and ducked immediately. But Falon was just smiling.

“What? You’re not going to hit me?” Aditya questioned.

“I finally figured why you call me that,” she said.

“Pray! Do enlighten me,” Aditya teased.

Falon stepped closer. She leaned in till her mouth was right next to his ears and then answered – “It’s because I intoxicate you as much as one.”

Aditya kept looking at Falon. Suddenly Falon burst out laughing.

“Gotcha!” she said. “After all those straight-faced jokes of yours, I finally got back at you!” She kept stepping onto and off the footpath, like she were doing a little victory dance.

“But you are not far from the truth,” Aditya said. Falon stopped dancing and turned around to look at Aditya. Aditya walked up to her and took her hand in his.

“No matter how good you are sweetheart, the last one’s always mine,” he said, and winked at her.

“ADI! Not fair ya!” Falon said as she jerked his grip off. Aditya caught up and hugged Falon around her waist.

“Come on Falon,” he said, trying to make up to her. “Be a sport!” he teased, and soon enough they were both giggling like teenagers.

“I knew you were kidding,” Falon said, blushing only slightly.

“No, you didn’t. You totally fell for it,” Aditya said.

“Okay I admit, maybe for a moment I did. But I would never take it seriously for more than that! The concept of dating you is just so weird, so – so alien!” Falon added.

“I know, I know,” Aditya said – “Same to you!” he said and stuck his tongue out. Falon stuck hers out at him in response.

“Look at us! We are crazy!” Falon said.

“No, I am totally sane – but yes; if not you, your madness sure is intoxicating!” Aditya replied. They had reached the old rusty gate that guarded the playground from trespassers. Falon looked at the heavy padlock chained to the gate.

“Now what?” she asked.

“We climb, and then we jump!” Aditya said, securing his bag-pack on his back and began climbing up the gate. He reached the top and jumped onto the wall next to it. He turned around. Falon was merely staring at him.

“What, did you think there was gonna be champagne and red carpet to welcome you?” he said. “Come on! You can climb up! You’re wearing jeans!”

Falon handed her clutch to Aditya and climbed up the gate and sat next to Adi on the wall.

“Yahin baithate hai?” she suggested. (Let’s stay here?)

“Arre no ya! Let’s go to the centre of the playground! Trust me, you will love it,” Aditya said.

Falon turned to look at the ground and heaved a sigh. “I am so tired ya… please!”

“Moti! (Fatso!)What tired?” Aditya teased. “Come on!” and before Falon could say another word in protest, Aditya had jumped off the wall and started walking towards the centre.

“Saala mere ko moti kehta hai,” (You’re calling me fat, you dog!) Falon said jumping of the wall herself. “Ruk. Abhi dikhati hun.” (I’ll show you who’s fat.) She took off her jacket and tied it around her waist. She rolled up the sleeves of her white cotton blouse. She took a stance and called out to Aditya.

“ADI!”

Aditya stopped dead in his tracks and turned around to look at Falon.

“HERE I COME!”

And the next moment Falon was racing towards Aditya. Aditya recovered from the initial shock and started running himself. He huffed and puffed as he saw Falon come from behind him and dash ahead of him, and before he knew it, she had reached the centre of the ground!

Aditya slowed down as he saw Falon do her little victory dance again. He covered the rest of the distance in a slow-jog.

“So who’e the fatso, eh?” Falon said.

“Hey, you’re a trained athelete, okay? I am a commoner! You should appreciate I even tried to race you,” Aditya said as he kneeled down on the ground. Falon kneeled next to him and immediately started tugging at his bag-pack.

“Come on now. You shouldn’t keep a girl waiting for so long for a drink! All that walking and running’s made me thirsty!”

Aditya laughed as he let Falon pull his bag off his back and watched her as she opened the wine bottle. A couple of big gulps later she realised the oddness of the whole thing. “Why do you have a wine bottle on you anyway?”

“Because we were going to meet at your place initially? And because it is good manners to take a bottle of wine when someone calls you over for dinner.”

“Since when did ‘manners’ become so important to you?”

“Since now,” he said and pulled his bag out of Falon’s hands. He pulled out a small gift neatly wrapped in plain blue paper with an ink blue coloured ribbon on it. He held the gift out to Falon and said “Happy birthday sweetheart.”

Falon looked at her watch. It was mid-night. Falon just kept staring at her watch. “How did you know?” she asked without looking up.

“I’d asked you, you’d told me a long time back!” Aditya exclaimed.

“No I meant – how did you think of doing all this? Mid-night, wine, new-moon, blue wrapping…”

“Well, that’s what friends are for, isn’t it?”

Falon still kept staring at her watch and refused to look up. Aditya moved closer to her and held up her face. He saw a tear trickle down Falon’s cheek.

“Falon.”

“No! It’s ok. I’m alright,” Falon said, readily rubbing her cheeks clean. She held out her hand, and Aditya placed the gift in it. She untied the ink blue ribbon and the paper unfolded. Falon took one look at the little black box and knew what was inside. She handed the box back to Aditya. “I would like you to put it on me,” she said.

Aditya smiled and opened the box. He took the silver chain out, closed the box and set it on the ground. Falon quickly picked it up and dusted it.

“Oho! Niche kyun rakha? (Why did you put it down?)”

Aditya held his ears.

Falon smiled and turned her back to Aditya. She pulled her hair onto one side. Aditya carefully held the chain in place and tightened the clasp. Falon turned around and looked down at the pendant – a pair of small silver dolphins, with diamonds as eyes.

“This is just perfect Aditya,” Falon said.

“What, are you kidding me? The bottle’s not even half empty!” Aditya said, and they were giggling all over again. Aditya looked at Falon for a moment, and then lay down on his back. “Lie down,” he urged Falon. “You’ve got to check out the view.”

Falon removed her jacket from around her waist and laid it on the ground so as to not spoil her white blouse. She lied down and exclaimed almost immediately.

“This is lunatically beautiful!”

Aditya laughed.

They laid there for a while, both not saying a word. The summer air was not cold, but was far from hot too. They laid there for a while, both talking about myriad things – their first birthdays, their latest crushes, the last movie they’d seen together, the worst New Year’s Eve they’d had, the one time in their lives when they felt nothing was impossible… after a while they were just staring at the sky… the clear, moonless, starry sky.

“That,” Falon said, pointing out to a star, “is the Orion.”

“Hmmm.”

“I’ve always loved that name, ‘Orion’. If I have a daughter someday, I’m gonna name her Orion.”

“Orion. But you know Orion is ‘The Hunter’, right?”

“Is it?” Falon asked, quite surprised. “I didn’t know that!”

Aditya laughed. “Funny you want to christen your girl with a name you do not even know the meaning of!” Aditya remarked.

“Aye! It’s still a beautiful name! And I will name my daughter that someday…”

“I hope you do also know that to have a daughter you need to be married; to a man no less…” Aditya remarked again. Falon hit him on his stomach. “Ooouww!” he exclaimed.

“Come on! It’s not like I am never going to get married!”

“I know honey, I am only teasing…”

Falon suddenly put her arm around Aditya and hugged him.

“Ha! You cry and I want to hug you, and you verbally push me away. And now you hug me. Why can’t I push you away?”

“Who said no? Of course you can. But do you really want to?” Falon challenged, and Aditya only put an arm around Falon in response. They stayed like that for a moment, and then Falon got up and sat, leaning against Aditya’s legs.

“You know Aditya, I was really grateful when we became friends. There’s a certain age that we all cross in life, after which there’s hardly ever a guy who approaches you because he wants to be nothing more than just a friend. They all are always attracted to you, and so want to become your friend in the hope of becoming a lover sometime down the line. What makes it ugly is when they realise it’s not gonna work out. Then they cut you off like you never existed. Whatever happened to friendship? Sometimes I hate this whole ‘love’ funda. It’s like, there’s a guy and a girl, they are best friends, till they become teenagers, and then they get attracted to each other. In the beginning its all weird cos, they are like best buddies till then. And then they get all infatuated, and start to think it’s ‘love’, and then they start dating, going out, till one of them finally grows up or – luckily – both of them do. But then it’s even weirder, cos now every time they meet each other as friends, they think about the times when they were sweethearts… and then they just, kind of, let it die.”

Falon paused. Aditya waited for her to continue, but she didn’t. Finally he prompted her –

“What was his name?”

“Rohan.”

“Hmmm.”

There was another long pause.

“I am just so glad that’s never gonna happen between us,” Falon said finally. “Sometimes that’s all that you want – a best friend.”

“Correction,” Aditya interrupted. “You may get tired of a brother, an aunt, your mother, even love for that matter – or love even more so. But no matter what, that’s something you will always want – a best friend.” Pause. “That was a good line!”

Falon applauded and held up the bottle.

“It was a mighty good one!” she exclaimed.

They mingled for a little longer and talked about some more random stuff after that. They then walked back to the restaurant, in front of which they had parked their bike. They held hands while walking, on their way back, and it wasn’t weird at all. It was the most comfortable feeling in the whole world…








*Author’s Note: A lot of people wonder quite often how girls sometimes find it easier to talk to boys than other girls. A lot of people ridicule and even deny accepting friendship between a guy and a girl as just friendship and nothing else. This piece is to celebrate exactly that – friendship. It is to celebrate the kind of comfort you have with your best friend that you don’t with any other person in the world. This piece is for all those who have – at least at some point of time, even as briefly as for a moment – valued friendship. This piece is for those unselfish people in your life who like you for what you are, not what you can be; for those people who you can call even only once in a year and still share the same warmth and connect as you used to in your hey-days… this one’s for you, my Friend. Even as cliché as it sounds, life’s truly is beautiful cos you’re a part of it.

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