This tiny thing called friendship!

As a child I remember feeling very happy when my friends used to scribble in my slam book with multi-coloured glitter pens, saying You ARE my BEST friend... I will miss you... and life wouldn’t have been the same without you and things like that. The kind of high lines like those gave me, I wonder if it would again, now. But it would sure make me happy and smile. That I know.
But as they say, time changes everything. And for me the concept of BEST friend became a thing that was meant just for kindergarten and did not hold much weight till a really long time. And then history repeats, because time erased that too.
I think the best thing that can happen to a person is to have a somebody in their lives with whom he could discuss about everything under the sun, chaff and grain together and not conscious that he stood a chance to be judged or ridiculed or discussed about or laughed at. That is the definition of trust. This kind of trust never comes overnight and it stands as a testimony to the strength it has gained over tides and time. It is like giving a person the key to destroy you with your own secrets but believing that they never would. Belief! Trust! It sounds do powerful, don’t they?
In a time where morality and trust and faith is being replaced by ultra modern lifestyles and material well-being, to get someone to rattle your hearts out is more than a mere blessing. Everybody has had their set of experiences which re-enforced their faith in a person. How your friend had this one chance to doubt you and let you down, but without doing which they gained all your trust just by proving your doubt wrong. How they suddenly change from a dear friend to your best friend. YOUR BEST FRIEND! When it comes to finding someone with whom you can discuss your darkest secrets, your most intimate feelings, your true motives – you realise that your never ending friends list has finally shrivelled and shrunk into a mere digit, if not zero. And that is a really overpowering feeling, having no one for you. When the fact that you don’t have THAT person in your life to share your heart with stares mercilessly at your face, you scroll down the list of friends debating with yourself that he/she might be the person with whom one could unnerve. And many a time, s you feared, you will find your feelings being so trivialised, making you end in thicker shit. I remember an incident in college where a common friend tried to create a ridge between two of us. He fabricated stories one after the other, but all my friend said was that: “I know he couldn’t do something like that, and even if he did, I would know that before you”. And the best thing was that my friend, Sahai, did not even ask me if such a thing happened. He just trusted in me so much to never make that mistake and also to ever hide it from him if at all I had. If not for a third person who saw and heard all this who informed this to me, I would have never known about this ever. When you have that kind of friend in your life, you really can never be thankful enough for all that they have done to make your life easier and better, for all that you know that they have done and for the many others, which you don’t even know! This is the definition of trust, definition of grace, definition of never-ending friendship.
And this other dear friend who was gone far away, just as I started to know him, made me think that that season of friendship met the swan’s song. But with his actions and deeds, he proved to me that the distance in miles is just arbitrary, as the hearts can never be too far away, when one cares for the other. And today, not a day goes by when he isn’t thought about and a smile doesn’t flash on my face.
I have a friend with whom I have fought for more times than one and with whom I stopped talking, after a bitter, nasty fight and behaved like strangers to each other for around 3 years. But like how two separate paths merge into one...we finally got back, with a more intense feeling, a more intense understanding. Something like a passion or frenzy or something like that. It just made me realise that deep inside I had been missing her all the while, I just wouldn’t allow myself to agree. I just wouldn’t allow me to be the first one to admit that his mistake. But I can’t be gladder that we did break the ice and are finally bum-chum buddies again.
A friend, whom I spoke to after 10 years, after we said adieu in school; a dear colleague with whom work-environment seems much more comfortable; a friend whom I have met just thrice but who knows me in and out; a school buddy who’s soldiered with me for more than 14 years now; and many more that have contributed into making me what I am today by their actions both big and small, has made my journey so far complete. They all have different stories to tell, with no intersections, all different in every aspect, but yet so similar in the place they occupy in my heart. I have had my fair deal of bull crap, but today I know that when I need someone to pull me out of neck deep shit, I would see hands out there.
And today, like play school, I do have my set of best-est friends. Haha, the juvenile feelings that every human mind is capable of! I have read in places many that a man starts as a kid and ends as one. I ‘still’ can’t imagine how life would have been without all of you.

(If Babitha and Shiju are feeling left out, don’t be. You are lifeline. Family!)