A Friend I Lost

Life gives you everything. Joy, sun; sorrow, cloud; grief, rain.
I have never liked rain.
Once, in school, My Science teacher was teaching about the evaporation, the clouds, the rain, the hail.
But I was looking outside the classroom window. Watching my friend play football. In the rain.
And I just wished I was outside. Playing with him.
My teacher saw me, comes over, and asks angrily, “Do you know how rain happens?”
I said, “I don’t know how it happens. But I know where it happens.”
He asks me, “Where?”
“Outside. It always happens outside.”
He asks me to stand up. And lashed two heavy punches on my palms with the duster.
I didn’t mind.
There’s no such thing as a bad teacher. Only a bad student.
I am a bad student.

I never told my friend that I watched him play.
I mean why would I tell him I was so jealous.
So, masterfully hiding my jealousy, I asked him, “Did you enjoy playing in the rain?”
And he said, “Yeah. I thought you were coming too.”
“Oh Yeah, I wish. (Again, masterfully hiding my jealousy) I must have missed out on so much man.”
He looks at me and says, “Not really. It isn’t fun without you.”
My heart broke. Who was I masterfully fooling really?

Many years later, one night, he suffered a heart attack.
Cardiac arrest – if you like sophistication. Dil ka Daura – if you don’t like sophistication.
A large part of me died that night. But a small part of me kept him.
Safe in one corner of my heart. 

This made me realise one thing.
Life gives you everything. Joy, sun; sorrow, cloud; grief, rain.
And I have never liked rain.
Grief. Is a long rain. A hailstorm. A hailstorm that hits your heart. It’s like your body vanishes. And all that is left, is your heart. And the hail. And the pain.

I wonder what he must have felt in his last moments.
I hope he felt the joys he had, the love he shared, the pain he let go off, and that he left this world a better place.
I hope he knew I watched him play.

Outside, In the rain.