We met on orkut 5 yrs back.....Vittorio De Si ca was it??? or the bi-cycle thief??I don't remember clearly but somehow the conversation started.....initially like the Hollywood movies we didn't disclose our identities...but, sooner our topics shifted from movies to all kinds of weird stuff..ice cream flavors to rooftop bonsais...table fans to cookery books...we realized our chemistry was better than Tom Hanks-Meg Ryan....so, here came the names...
Kaushik, was from Delhi...worked at a radio station...he told me stories of his daily life...I was seeing Delhi thru his eyes....the roads, the shops, the cries of the vendors. I fell in love with Delhi....a year later he shifted to Kolkata...our friendship became stronger....yes, it was friendship....it could have followed the scripts of a classic blockbuster Hindi movie with us becoming lovers, exchanging gifts and romantic glances....but alas! we took the road less traveled by....we fought...screamed, shouted, called names(only on mails, as we didn't exchange cellphone numbers) and became the best of friends...he was there when I needed, and I guess I was there for him too... he taught me to move on, not to get upset over trivial matters...and many more...
though it came to me many times that we had the potential of Romeo-Juliet, but I was not interested in following those who think 'it's better to be loved and lost'...
He was like a dream....he was my living diary... I had never seen him, never talked to him...yet he was so close to my heart.... though, later we exchanged our photos through Orkut...
every year we would ponder how our friendship managed to survive for so long! But, giving up, moving away was never on our mind....it was like he existed but not the way everybody does....he was existing but not like every other person I met...never to be seen, never to be heard...somewhat like God, whom you can pray for support in distress, fight if He does not listen to you...get angry but can never deny his presence...
In this simple life of ours, it's the little moments of the unexpected happenings that make our life magical...It was an uneventful day. I was crossing park street, with a thonga of jhaalmuri in my hand, absentmindedly looking at the bright lights of the shops and hoardings drawing all my attention...suddenly,...
Hey!.....
did someone call my name???...lazily I turned back, there was none...again Hey! This time, in the parking lot beside me, stood a brand new red Swift, and someone from in it was calling me...I bent down to see who it was, and jumped back like a spring....!!! it was him, Kaushik...I was so sure....waving back at me was my dream, my God, my friend...
But I felt I was not as happy to see him as I should have been. He too was passive, like a chord missing from a beautiful melody..he ran to me and shook my hand....but something was missing....I felt he was no more the friend I poured my heart into...I felt he too was no more interested in me...the miracle that we had met and that too accidentally was more than anything that can be expressed in words...we were numbed by this magical incident..The reality that he was there, he talked and laughed the way everybody does,
this reality that he actually was standing there, waving at me, broke the dream...
After coming back home, I realized there was a part of me that romanticized our friendship...that part which was cherishing the dream...however, after this, we exchanged our numbers....talked..and the friendship was as it should be.....
till now, he is my messiah when I'm down or upset...my chalta-firta movie encyclopedia...my student in the field of emotional outbursts...and my reason to believe that God can't be everywhere so he sends friends....
