02 August 2020.
My job profile requires me to create model answers for academic content of all sorts – regular homework, exams and the works. Since English is usually everyone’s bane and the love of my life, I especially enjoy creating these model answers. It is quite interesting to see how my own vocabulary needs to sift and pick out the words that can be exclusively comprehended and spelled out properly by the target audience.
I always start out easy and then move on to the higher standards. A typical case of familiar to complex. And so, this particular “essay” popped up on my agenda a few days ago.
Std. 2 English : Q4. Write 4 to 5 lines on the topic ‘My Best Friend’.
Name this person. What is his / her name? How does he / she look? What activities do you do together? What do you like best about this person?
Sounds absolutely easy, doesn’t it? I thought so too. My fingers flew over the keyboard as I typed out – “My best friend’s name is ……..” and I came to an abrupt stop. WHO was my best friend?
All my life, my mother has been trying to hammer in this very fact into my brain – You don’t have to quote real life facts and people in your school essays! No one checks the facts, as long it is logical and doesn’t misinform in any way. NOW (so many years later!) I realise what she meant by ‘misinform’ but back then, I almost felt guilty of conjuring up something fictitious.
The same internal conflict caught me in its hold this moment that I faltered over the name of my best friend. Only this time round, there was nothing fictitious to quote. Back in school, when I actually had to write up these essays – there was one single name that came to mind. My first friend ever, the only one.
As we grew to build our own friend circles, another name surfaced. She knew all my secrets, explored many a budding businesses with me, shared her cashews with me and who always had as much to talk with me as I did with her.
But where she lacked, another made up. This best friend walked many a mile with me, right from running household chores to made up excuses just to get out of the house!
The world of boys opened up somewhere around this time, and I carved my way through infatuations and pimples to build up a strong fortress of (boy) friends who gave me something no other friend had until then – sheer honesty that knocked sensibility into my mind from time to time. Guys who challenged my intellect, who cracked silly jokes and who also deeply believed that I could achieve anything I set my mind to.
College life obviously paved its way into new passions and thus new best friends. Our trio of trackpants survived and thrived, amidst swirly skirts and hot dresses.
A summer hobby brought me a whole new set of best friends, who understood the stress and joy of looking after enthusiastic campers, and who exulted in the sheer joy of a fireflies lit tree as we breathed sighs of relief late at night. They saw me in my worst and brought out the best within me.
A Masters’ experience on foreign lands helped me forge a friendship that lasted beyond all geographical boundaries. Here were people from various parts of the world, being each other’s family – caring, sharing, venting, screaming, shopping, crying, hugging and making the world right itself on lonely homesick nights.
And then if you’re lucky, you collect some best friends along the professional route too. For there’s no one who’d ever fully understand the trials and tribulations of work loads, deadlines, challenges, late nights and early mornings. You forge a relation that sparks within the office walls, and which slowly seeps into a life beyond. Because who better than those you spend almost 40 hours a week with?!
Through all of this, there’s always been family who with time, has materialised more into friends too. Who have witnessed all my failures and successes silently, and had my back no matter what. Who took their back seat when I needed them to, but who came marching straight ahead when I had no one to turn to.
And of course, there’s the guy I married – the ultimate best friend. Who has to hear me snore and kick him in the guts on the nights I’m dead tired. Who has to listen to me yap non stop because he’s the first one I’d come share my excitement with. Who is perhaps the only one at the time being, who knows ALL that is going on in my life, day in day out.
All these people later (and counting!), I wonder why I faltered over the name of my best friend. Was life easier then, I catch myself thinking…..because you just had that one person there, in your corner? Today, despite all these names, there are days when I am on my own. When a hesitant “Wassup” receives an almost instant “Next weekend? Promise!”
Is that why I worried for a minute, when I couldn’t bring myself to think of a single name? I go through what I just wrote and I realise….that though I no longer have a single person to meet all my needs, I do have a huge (or just enough!) circle of friends who’ve been there for me in the various phases of my life….and who have collectively shaped me into this person that they still like and hold close.
And at this point, it suddenly hits me….I am actually glad I faltered over the name of my best friend. Because I don’t think I’d be able to survive on a single friend any more. Because I need someone to watch me cry and someone to give me a hug. I need someone to hear me chatter non stop while I also need someone to enjoy the silence with. I do want a hot coffee in the balcony but I also want a sunset atop the water tank. I want someone to share songs he thinks I’d appreciate, and someone to drag me to the movies with her. Someone to help me manage my routine better and someone to inspire these words within me.
And so it doesn’t really matter that all these are actually different people in my life. What matters is that I have them, and each spot is unique.
Perhaps I am going to have to create a fictitious name to complete this essay after all, but I do hope that the students who read this particular essay one day grow up to experience the same conflict I went through while writing up an answer for them.
And who eventually will have to conjure up a best friend’s name to go into their essay as well, just because they couldn’t choose who they liked the best 🙂
shivani,beautifully narrated the storey of friendship and and how one thinks at different stages of life. your blog is always very inspirative and fresh.
god bless you dear…
Thank you, Hemant kaka 🙂
Great Shivani, i realised myself that I can not survive on one “Best Friend”.. It has to be “Best Friends”… list is long and counting too..
Thank you and good luck 😉