My Best Friend.

Who are best friends? People who you trust with anything and everything. People who are your helpline/emergency services; an ambulance when you’re hurt, a brigade when you’re angry, and the police when problems befall on you. There’s a future connotation to this term, “Best Friend” because when you refer someone as such, you believe they’ll forever stay in your lives. Also, the most unique thing about them, which can be said with utmost conviction, is that they’ve seen your extremes, and might be the only ones to experience it. And probably, the concept of best friend gets whitewashed when we become 15-16, because till this time, they’re probably your ‘soul sister’ or ‘brother from another mother.’ They are a part of your family, and sometimes, your only family –  a home away from home.

My best friend. He was my senior at school, and I may even land up being his junior again in college, but never in this ten years of friendship has he ever let me feel this junior | senior thing. Though, I’ve studied all my school with his books and thus, every year before the new session begun I realized that I was his junior, but that were the only times when it happened. He never imposed his seniority, but has been my elder brother and my guardian to guide me through difficult times, to help me with any little experience of his, or simply to tell me the sums and examples which are important for preparation before maths exam.
Our friendship kick started more so like an arrange marriage. Our mothers, having been friends since their school life, wanted their sons to know each other and so we did. The first month into our friendship, was driven by my excitement of having to associate with a senior, a very big achievement when you’re in junior school. So, it happened with the hand cricket we played going to school and back, given we had the same carpool, that our friendship got a name. The best friend branding came during the week long summer camp at junior school when I was in class 4. “Ek din tum le aana bacchon ko, ek din hum le aayenge”, said her mother to my mother. The first day, when aunty picked us up was the day I was introduced to my second home. He did not want me to go home, I did not want to leave. The next day, he came to my home. And? And he started crying because he wanted to go home. Thus, a best friendship between an introvert and an extrovert. (Not entirely an introvert, but just reserved for some special people.)
Post-summer camp, if there was one place where I wanted to go, so eagerly, was to his house carrying along with me my blue or sunflower CD case for computer games we played at his house. Then there was the indoor cricket we played where I always believed he is cheating with the rules because it isnt humanly possible for him to win all the series of indoor cricket matches we have played till date. It also means two things: a) I am that bad at cricket when we play against each other. b) He is that good at cricket when he plays with any freaking person/team and anywhere, be it my terrace, any other terrace or a ground. Then there was the indoor football, where atleast I hoped to win some few games over him because we made our own rules meaning he cannot cheat.
Own rules, own ways, own conventions are a thing so unique to each best friendship, which may find respect among others or mostly be found silly by anyone coming to terms with. For example, while going to school each morning, we sat on parallel window seats, and talk rarely, and hum the latest bollywood songs and then used to physically fight with each other just randomly out of fun.
About more of our ways; we don’t talk at all when we have exams or we haven’t watched a movie together. There was one time we were laughing so hard that his brother told us, “Khud ka pet kamm parr gaya toh ek doosre ka pet pakarr ke hass lo” and… we actually did that and kept doing that because it made us laugh even louder. Best friendships clearly mean having a person who is your perfect type of damaged, as damaged as you are.
I still keep going to his home though now when I enter his home, he’ll tell his mother, “Phirse khaana khaane aa gaya!” For the past three years, the story has been the same and I doubt if his mother has finally agreed with him. No, mummy is super-nice. [You stop using ‘Aunty’ for your friend’s mother after so many years of friendship.]
After 10 years of such friendship am I expressing my gratitude and feelings for him, but his expression of such feelings came on his birthday, his first with me. 18th September became one of the most important days of my every year, since then. We went to Kumartuli Park to play cricket. All of his friends fought amongst each other, as to who will become the captain. There he came, to say one of the cutest things he has ever said in his life; “Chetan aur Sarvesh mera best friends hai. Unlog hi captain banega.” Sreeeejan! Yes, my best friend: Sreejan Tharad.
Talking about his birthday, we’ve been with each other on our every birthday, whatever the time period be, but never celebrated it like best friends do. We’ve rarely gifted each other anything except for a photo frame I gave him once, and he gave me an orange weekender shirt which I always wore it to his house. Its been 7-8 years to those two gifts we exchanged and I still can recount them so well. Our friendship, strangely, never found its meaning in gifts.
Best Friends are those people who are the only ones who have the key to your secret life. They are your chamber of secrets. The most fundamental secret to teenagers is the girl in his/her life. So, it happened after dispersal one afternoon that Sreejan walked up to me…
Sreejan: Chetan? Tumko ho kya gaya hai? Poora din online rehta hai. Pyaar wyaar ho gaya hai kya?
I was in class 7 then. I blushed like mad. I nodded. He laughed at my reaction. We went mad over the prospect of a girl in my life.
This small conversation trasported us to a whole new dimension. Our conversations’ wind now flew from anywhere to anywhere. He reciprocated his respect for friendship, by telling about his crush. First crushes or first loves are always overwhelming but it wouldn’t have been so if we did not play cupid to each other. We stalked our crushes, advised ways to impress them, sought any positive signals from the other side and once this positive signal came, our each syllable danced to its own tune.
Legends say, girl ruins friendships. Experiences say, girl strengthens best friendship. We have the key to our secret life, and also have been the key to each other’s secret life and if I go on to talk more about it, my relatives reading this blog would probably get me out of my home. 😀
Best Friends are also your ‘quick dial’ for your small-but-still-big problems or your extreme emotions. Sreejan, too, is my first-person-to-go-to-in-times-of-crisis but he is just my first person to call, he isn’t my first person to talk to which is by virtue of his habit of not picking up calls in the first dial. Mood offs indicate wrong times, but I feel so much wrong with this wrong time because he’ll be never available to take my call then. And I will always call him, still.
Computers have been a significant part in our friendship, as will be the case with every relation in the modern era. My computer’s incompatibility with the high graphics game can be cited a major reason for our bonding, for I ran with my CDs to his home. I still remember how we stalked our crushes from his computer, hiding the computer screen from his mother and suddenly referring the girl by a boy’s name. You’re never a guest at your best friend’s house and so was the case here as he never cared if I even got a chair to sit in front of the computer. You’re never decent in behaviour towards your best friend and so was the case when I dug my fingers below his hand placed on the mouse.
And then Facebook was a continual discovery of each other’s madness.

He has been sunky with me, fell on the ground laughing, cried on my shoulder, laughed hard holding my stomach, hit me on my legs, [He has some brute power!] got irritated and angry at me and in all this, he has been a person you will always want to seek company of.
His love and respect towards me has many a time left me in awe;
Class 10 just started. Elections already had happened. I was running for the post of the Head Boy. He was so passionate in his support, that it seemed he fulfilled his dreams with me getting a post. This was such an overwhelming feeling for me. Before he got to know and even before it was announced, he started to fill my Facebook wall with his congratulatory posts. Larka heera hai! 

I’ve told him, I am writing something for him on my blog.
“Usme last mein yeh bhi likh dena ki He wont be reading this at all” Sreeeejan! Yes, my best friend: Sreejan Tharad.