Friends

I was just reading Sue's blog about all the people she knows who've left the country and have left her that much poorer. It strange when that happens to people, especially when some of the people leaving are close friends.
Nothing such as this has happened to me. Almost none of my closest friends have gone abroad, and yet so many are away. Some are right here but we don't talk much. But I guess that doesn't matter.
In the beginning there was Rajah. We became freinds when we were in school and quite inseparable ones at that. Mostly people found him difficult, pompous, self-obsessed. But show me one teenager who isn't. But what was cool about him was that he was interesting. He had this innate sense of style that was unapologetic and an intelligence that shone through his shades. We loved the Beatles, we hated the Stones, we rapped Kerouac to each other and shared books. We smoked our first cigarettes together, rolled the first joints, drank the first beers. What a guy, I hope every kid has such a friend to grow up with. Today I don't even know where he is. He's been missing for the last six years or so. It would be fair to say we drifted apart. While I opted for the cool joys of JU and Rajah took some disastrous career decisions. He was unhappy and lonely, while I was enjoying myself too much to care. So he fell off the map, and today I doubt he'd want to know me. I don't know if I'd want to know him either. I'm scared of who he might not be. So there's that.
Then there was Arj. He was the sleeping partner in the triumverate at school of which me and Rajah were the other members. He was the loosest cause he loved people so much, and people loved him back. He was easily the most popular guy in school by the sheer dint of his personality. He never held any posts, did not have any myths about a lady-killer(though he was that as well) and he was the most wonderfully random boy to talk to. You could rap about anything with him, and he'd match you blow for imaginative blow. He laughed uproariously, gave nicknames to people weirder than what I could think up, loved Douglas Adams. Its even unfair to begin to describe him. When I went to JU, he left for Presidency, and we formed our rival gangs of cool people, which loved having wild parties with each other. And so he is today, an MBA later, an executive in Bombay, who I believe in the heart of hearts, doesn't really give a damn. He continues to love and be loved, and I miss him and his madness. These days, he even has a secretary!!
Then Boz. Ah Boz! What a collossus of the imagination! He is the one person I know who was so desperate to have a lost weekend that he literally codeined himself to a weekend-long stupor from which he emerged on a Monday in college with his tattered sports bag, and his mad scientist hair and his dusty jeans and his scruffy beard looking like a Jerry Garcia of the Indian night. We were great pals in school and that friendship deepened into a form of unconcious telepathy when in college. Chewing his lips, shaking his head vigorously, making mad dashes across 2000 km to woo some girl, making a mythic monster of his nice dog to scare us, going into the sea in the buff in Goa to meet the dolphins...ah where do I stop. He started out a rocker, with his cheap Fender copy reading "Mark (Knopfler) and I", decided that we didn't appreciate Chinese tones, and so chucked it all to seriously get into photography. Today he's finishing off as a cinematographer in FTII, and making promises to come meet me and go to Manali for some hash! All the while he's dodging adoring women, proposing drunkenly and running away the next day, helping yet other women find their roots...he is the candle!
And now Rudder. I hated him for a while as a freshman. He had the temerity to say REM were better than the Beatles! But it was a ruse, really, when all he wanted to do was do cool things and have sex. He metamorphosed into a kind of living fertility symbol, who could cook, play football, swim, run, win awards at academics, go for treks, and make a succession of women swoon over him. Oh Rudder, they'd coo, and we were all the richer for it! He was my alter ego, which in a strange way he still is. We would share stories of exploits, behave like weird twins by saying the same thing together, bum condoms from each other, rap Kerouac (again!). I was in the same band as he, so we also had the music. Later, when I came to Delhi, there was no question about it. We would stay together...which we did, for a while. He's still here, and I'm still here, moving in different orbits, making the same mistakes, being ourselves and in a way reminding each other of all the things we are; all the things we have become and all the things we yet could be. We're still in a band.
And finally, Sue. She was a fresher when I was in second year, and I was floored. She wasn't glamorous, she wore her pyjamas to college and was mortally afraid of anyone touching her. But she was hot! I bumped into her down a staircase, and devised devious means to get her to go for films (with Rudder's help), get her to sing with me...when I hugged her once, she was shivering. And yet she was free. She had her own opinions, and she'd never give an inch. I pined and I kicked walls in fustration- she was with some country yokel down in Vizag- I threatened Rudder to back off when he evinced interest. Then I read her Borges at Kharagpur and told her about the fair greens of Lothlorien. In a few months we were together...a mythical Beq'n'Sue in college, the same person, always together, singing together. I guess only we knew the truth to it, and thankfully it was so complicated. I became a lover with her, I became me, I lost my arrogance, I got rhythm, and she was freed once and for all from all the chains that bound her. But after three years of (almost-though-not-quite) bliss, we had a falling out, as lovers often will. But I guess we both gained a friend in the parting. She lives in Cal with her V and the wonderful little Wee Kiddo, trying to be a good mother and a thoroughly cool human being. We have our jokes and each other, in a weird fractious family where everyone is king!