A friend from my
college days resurfaced after 14 years-courtesy of social media. This is a
commonplace incident. One of the pros of social media is that it is a good
search engine to find people you have lost touch with.
The exciting bit about this event is that Razia not only resurfaced and exchanged
phone numbers, but she also talked about our college days with incredible
accuracy. She managed to beat my memories with remarkable attention to detail.
I now realize I chose to forget and, therefore...
Razia and I got estranged because one of us decided to. With 14 years of events
accumulated in our individual lives, you find it challenging to connect with
the same language! I found it difficult to proceed with the conversation at
first. I did not know what to ask or what not to. I was more interested in
figuring out the change in her personality than the familiarity with which I
have kept her image in my mind for the past 14 years. Does she still discuss
what she liked to back in the day? Or, with 14 years gone by, now a wife and mother
of two kids, does she only talk about household chores, her husband's income,
or the more generic in-law conversations?
Razia, as a friend with whom I shared almost two years of my post-graduation
days, has not changed much. Or maybe she has, but within the common sphere that
a friend shares with another close friend, I could not locate much change. She
does not look the same, for sure. But she does talk in the same manner she used
to!
When we were studying English at the university, we shared meals, tea breaks,
books, Rabindra Sangeet sessions, and, of course, tears! I had a lot of it, and
so did Razia.
Days together, during the breaks between two classes, sitting on the lush green
outfield of the campus, Razia and I used to shed tears about the discordant
elements we had in our lives; the deeply soul-stirring Rabindra sangeets somehow
always managed to grasp our haplessness irrespective of the reason of
haplessness. We would cry about the lack of pocket money, the lack of good
grades on our report cards....and so many other things.
It is interesting how two familiar friends can lack common elements in their
lives! We were two losers together.
None of us had money to enjoy life. We had just as much as we needed to commute
to college and have budget tiffin. Budget tiffin meant a cup of tea, a cake
(not a pastry)/or an egg chop (not mutton or chicken pakoras), or an egg noodles,
and that's it. If we had egg noodles, we could not afford the tea. If we had
tea and the egg chop, we imagined we did not need the noodles. It is
interesting how hunger can be trained to listen to the clinking sounds of the
coins in your pocket!
I have often found people going ga-ga over their past, glorious the past was
and all. Well, I am not sure about Razia; I did not have a glorious childhood,
exciting teenage, or lively youth to remember fondly. Those were tough days,
and the lack of monetary and emotional support from close quarters made it very
difficult. Surprisingly, coming from different families, Razia and I bonded
over those difficulties. And then we moved in different directions.
This being a public space, I would not talk about the series of events that
separated us, but on that day, late evening, while I was watching a reality
music show on TV and this unknown number popped up on my cell phone, and a
young voice asked, “Is this Chandrima, ma'am?” I had the slightest idea who the
young voice would transfer the phone to. It was Razia on the other end-the same
soft voice, the same tone, the same pitch, intonations!
We talked about where she is and what I was doing.We talked about our
respective families, and how things have changed. She asked me about my
ancestral house in Calcutta; if the real estate goons have managed to take it
over and transform it into an apartment? I said, no. I told her, things were
pretty much the same with little coats of paint and fancy furnishings doing
their magic on those brick-and-mortar structure. Internally, not much has
changed, I told her.
I also told her that I had changed a lot. Razia refused to believe. I said, not
only have I put on a few kilos, but as a person, who has endured the corporate
grind for x no of years, I am no longer the same emotional, sentimental human
being. Razia thought, that was not possible, and I must be the same sensitive
girl that I was! I smiled at myself.
Razia had to take out a few of her guilt confessions- things she thought she
hadn't done right. I listened to her quietly in the dark of the night, with my
bedroom's light switched off. She started with a trembling voice, which soon
gave way to a wailing that tore apart the silence in my bedroom.
'Let me cry over this, Chandrima. For so many years, not a single day passed
by, eating me up inside out with this guilt. I am sorry! I screwed up.
I still kept quiet.
I did not have many memories of those days when we were moving away. So, after
so many years, when she called, I did not feel any pain, any disgust, any
vitriolic feeling that sought vengeance.
I was free. Free from negative vibes, the sinister desire to feel, 'See there?
This is what happens if you betray me” None!
Guilty feelings are corrosive in nature. I wish Razia did not have to wait so many
years to take it off her being!
