Happy Friendship Day

Like every year, this day came again in my life. And probably it was for the first time ever, that I met some of my friends on or around friendship day. I met megi on the Friday preceding Sunday. The meeting was long overdue and was certainly not because of friendship day around. In fact it was not until last minutes of our meeting did we realise that friendship day was just so around the corner. It was a very casual meeting over a pizza and ice cream. Nothing much out of it.
On the night of Saturday I was over the phone with megi, who had called up 5 mins before 12 and wished me all of a sudden in between our conversation. I never realised that it was 12 and we are onsetting Frndshp day. Almost minutes after clock striked 12, sunshine messaged me, which I didn’t realise probably because of some settings of my phone. But, as soon as I did, I hung up on megi and read her msg. It was a long pre written msg conveying certain things I always knew and certain repeated phrases. I don’t even know whether that msg was written specifically to me or not. The message seemed to have a little general tone, and was probably written to a very selected few best frnds of her. I don’t know frankly. I cant recall an instance when I have done such a thing with her. Each and every emotional or imp msg sent to her had been personally written by me specifically for her. I just hoped that she did the same. But, what could I reply with was my next thought. She is no more a frend to me. She moved ahead of that definition long long back. She is my love, somebody whom I breathe every moment of my current life. And its certainly not the case that she doesn’t know all this. So, what could have been my reply to her? After all what I have went through in past month or so, can I send her a very normal reply? That is so much unlike what I used to be. But, to my surprise I replied to her with a very normal thanks and same to you msg. Im sure had she replied to it, I would have expressed myself so much yet again to her. But luckily or unluckily, she didn’t reply back. May be she had slept by the time I replied or may be that she was too busy……as she had been in recent days. I thought of calling her the next day.
It was already 9 when I was woken up by a call on my cell. It was Yuvi, wishing me in his usual style, by calling me up early morning. And pretty soon I deciphered that he plans to come over to our place for the day. I was excited and disappointed at the same time. With a little over month left for my gmat, it is not easy for me to go out on outings that often, and one with yuvi wouldn’t end in an hour or so, it surely meant at least half of the day out. But, I couldn’t refuse him. After all, he has been one of my most genuine friends ever. We decided to meet at DC and went to bercos, where we ordered some drinks and had an appetiser. Me ordering for a drink came as a surprise to him as I didn’t use to drink before I went to Mumbai. He even asked me how come this change and Im laughed it over saying “I have grown up”. We decided to catch up a movie and decided on “jaane tu ya jaane na” . He had watched it before, but still insisted me to come with him for it again. I wasn’t too keen on watching a movie on love/frndhsp…but gave in to his persuasive demand. While all this was going on, I thought of meeting shekhar n manav too and asked shekhar to see if we can meet up. But, both of them were busy and so it didn’t work out. I also called shreya, she never picked up but and neither did she replied back or messaged. Im somehow disappointed in calling her my best friend now. She has never been there when I have needed her and everytime we had met/talked, she had only her side of problems to share/discuss or ask solutions to. I wasn’t too upset with her on that day, but was really hurt the day I got to know that she left for US about 5 days after that Sunday. Neither did she meet me nor did she bothered to at least call me to say good bye and that too when we both were in the same city.
Nevertheless, I recd a msg from manav in between the movie asking me to come to CP to meet them. And after the movie, me and yuvi took a metro and headed for CP. Upon reaching there, yuvi headed for his home while I met those two monkeys. Nothing has changed amongst us. We still greet ourselves calling each other ‘kamine’. Probably the only thing that has changed is that we all are no more that carefree and relaxed as we used to be.
We landed once again at york’s…manav’s favourite restro bar, once again. It was daaru time again. Shekhar is still a non drinker and I chose not to drink as I had already taken some in the afternoon. We spent some time there, catching up on our past and talking about our present. Shekhar’s GF after a span of 5 years was a good enough topic for us to share some light moments. Man….this guy was in love….true love..and I was able to relate to all his words so much. It was beyond dusk when we finished our drinks and decided to go for a walk outside. It was a little cloudy and whether was perfect to spend some time out in open. We headed to central park and it was beyond 7 P.M.
I don’t know how it came…..but I told them about my decision to write Gmat. Both of them were shocked and awed. Stunned to their utter disbelief on hearing my decision. “Why do you want to do that?” was the first question that came out from them. They already know everything about me and my love, it wasn’t difficult for them to guess the reason barely after I had said some words. A debate started amongst us. Both of them were against this decision of mine. What about your parents? You don’t have any responsibility towards them? Why are you hurting yourself? Do you think you will be able to forget her once you are there? Do you think you love her only because you are in same city? Do you think you would stop loving her? Would you stop talking to us as well?

These were some of the questions they fired at me. I had answers to all of them, but I knew none was convincing. If I cant convince myself with answers, how can I convince them? For the first time in my life I realised that these guys know me much better than what I thought. I kept on defying their logic and reasoning and they kept on trying.
Tears were flowing out of my eyes all throughout. Manav snaped at me asking me why am I crying for a girl? Shekhar replied saying he is not crying because of a girl, he is crying because he can cry in front of us. I still remember the day when I had slapped Manav in front of the whole class in school because he was crying. I probably never knew the value of tears at that point of my life. Even after that slap, nothing changed between us.
We didn’t even realise that its 9 PM and we were still debating. I finally wanted to submit everything.

Manav was more vociferous of the two. He was still admonishing me, trying to convince me to change my decision.
Manav: “Kittu, you have been the one who I have always looked up to. You have given me strength and courage when I was in similar situation. Main humesha tujhe dekhta tha aur khud ko samjhata tha kit tere jaisa banun. Aur aaj tu aisi baatein kar raha hai? Kyun?”
Me: may be you didn’t knew me well. This is real me.
Manav: This is not real you. This is not our kittu. You have never been like this before. Deep inside, you are not one of those who show their backs to problems. You have taught me to fight. How come you are succumbing to everything now? Tu shayad khudko nahi jaanta, par hum jaante hain. Tu kabhi aisa nahi tha..aur na hi tu ab aisa hai. Fir tu kyun kar raha hai aisa?


I was quite once again in my life.



I didn’t budge. They had to give up on my decision. They were disgusted by the fact that im not at all listening to them. There was so much sarcasm in manav’s voice when he said “kittu is always right. He would not listen to us”

We bade good bye soon after