A Friendship confined to memories.... A Prologue

He was short while i was tall, he was white while i was brown, he was thin while i was rotund, he used to talk a lot i was the quite one.. But rarely could anyone tell us apart..

Rarely you could see us separated. At times many used to doubt, whether there was one person less in the class. Hand in hand, shoulder in shoulder, that is how we were. You could wonder how we could have become friends, But he was my comrade, my brother, my ally and my soulmate...

Keeping these differences aside, we had one thing in common, that was the love for each other. Me, him and AR (You ll get to know about him in another post) formed a gang of sorts.. a gang that was united by Math and seldom divided. Yes mathematics was our craze then.. we used to do all sorts of stuff with this subject that we loved in common. We would always try to defeat the another in solving the problem that was put forward to us, in deciphering another theorom that was thought and in acquiring new techniques to outwit and amaze the other.. But i have to admit, the other two were particularly good, even better than me i suppose. But none was our match, our equal.

It was the first day in class four, There i was sitting flabbergasted by the loss of my best friend Rumesh who has shifted his school and Sounder who wanted to do some more time in class three (mind you he was good in academics!!! He just didn't like growing up so fast) and by the shuffling of students that had been carried out, (- after which i d made up my mind that i d never have friends again..), when i saw these two little boys, (the other was rizwan and he was even bigger than i was, so u technically speaking cannot call little) seated in a row immediate to mine, go on rambling (for what i thought was eternity). Instead of feeling a great sense of irritation, i felt a sense rather of jealousy, a sense of deep sorrow, for me and rumesh would use to ramble in such a manner without a sense of time or thought.

That eternity seemed to end when our class teacher for that year, Sundari Mam came to our class. And boy did the class go mum on seeing her. She had the countenance of a tiger facing its greatest nemesis in battle (Boy was she strict!!!). Not even milliseconds had passed and she had begun damaging her reputation by shuffling around the students in class. (Every one swore with their eyes in such a manner that if she was n protected by that invisible forcefield, she would v been burnt to ashes!!). (She was however replaced by Jaya mam in the fag end of fourth class as Sundari mam was down with illness or something- may be fire had finally managed to penetrate that forcefield...). And as it turned out, i was seated near Rizwan, (i dunno, may be the teacher was trying to arrange the students in alphabetical order or something...) and the other radiohead (They went on talking like they do in radio)... (Oh god, why are u cornering me out for torture.. first rumesh was gone and now this, i actually thought that i would turn out to be deaf before the day was done!!!).They actually did manage to stop talking till the class teacher had left.. then it began all over again. I think it was till Lunch that this went on non stop, (no body was actually listening to the first class being introduction and all..) then suddenly the flury of words came to a sudden end. They had gotten up to take up their lunch bags (They used to be neatly arranged in the corner of the class, and what a pretty side it was all those tiny baskets of all shapes neatly arranged with each boy's and girl's name written in the small label glued to it...). Now after almost three hours had passed they noticed that there was this sad boy sitting near them, (They had started to take note of everything else in the class only then..) and the huge Rizwan with his rustic voice rumbled "Hey, aren't you goin to have your lunch?". At first i thought that the ramble was going to start again (I had a neck pain from hanging my head down in sorrow for all that time.. and I wasn't looking at him). This time it was the other voice saying it "Hey man we better leave hime alone, he seems quite depressed".

The rest of the day was quite a blur.. (May be my neck pain had gotten the better of my memory). It was a blur till it was end of the day prayer session again (The first day was usually very short!!). And boy you would look up and find a class with each boy and girl shining brighter than the sun. We packed our bags and got up for the prayer. End of prayer and everyone rushed to form part of the queue for the descent into the parent corridor. I was at the back of the queue with the other radiohead and Rizwan in front of me.. We descended the steps and finally the buzz of the radioheads stopped. Rizwan had rushed to the parent corridor, (his parent was already present there). I was left waiting in the corridor with the others also waiting. Then i heard the voice i had part began to dislike speaking to me. "Hey, why have you been so sad all day?". I looked up to find it was the other radiohead. At first i felt a great bout of shyness and resistance flooding my senses, but a greater bout of instinct overtook them.. "It s nothing, i am just put off by the shuffle.". "Oh, I see do not worry though.. we ll be friends from now on.. I am Sriram". "Hi Sriram, i am prabhu and you can call me by what my friend used to call me, saru". "Sure, Saru". He then gave a expresion which at first i mistook for a weird gesture that tribals used to do to scare animals off. Then on closer look i found that he had smiled. (I later went on to love the smile for the whole heartedness of it..). "Hey Saru, my sister has come da, see you tomorrow" he said without taking that smile off his face. That moment still stands as a picture in the galleries of my memory, because that was the moment that gave me one of my best friends, eqaulled only rumesh...

The next two years were spent in absolute bliss, the bliss of friendship. I till today cannot the times where we used to be at each other's place every weekend without fail, to play cricket and do all sorts of stuff. I still remember the fun times where your Father would drop me off at the nearby street after we had played our hearts out... and how we used to spend times in class chatting about all sorts of stuff (mainly math though, for we shared a common passion for it).. How we used to fight for the top rank in class... (He or nive (another good friend) would always come first and first in math.. I used to come second or third, very rarely first..) How i used to miss u in language class ( I had taken sanskrit and you hindi).. (the memories are so many that i have to devote a seperate blog and would still not be able to cover the entire two years in it..)


These were the days we spent in school together free from all the troubles of the world in our own world of fantasy where none but us were allowed to tread..

But then all good things have to come to an end....