Best Friends Forever, or How I Came to Know that Forever Doesn't Last That Long

We were the best of friends. We were inseparable- two faces of the same shiny coin, unblemished by life’s rusting ways of experience, hardship, and responsibility. Our lives entwined in a myriad different ways as we experienced each of life’s milestones in one another’s company- first days of school, summer haircuts at our grandmother’s hand, the first Christmases we would ever remember. And although we lived nearly 10, 000 miles away from one another, it was not the physical distance that would come to separate us in the end. No, in the end what separated us was the fact that we had become total strangers to one another, fumbling blindly in the dark to recover what we had lost between us.

He was the first and only boy I ever ran away from home with. We were two years old, a mischievous pair of brats who would steal medicine cups from cabinets and plant weeds in them, lining them up in tiny rows to rival my grandmother’s venerable garden. How we managed to get out of the sight of at least fourteen pairs of watchful eyes is beyond me, but we had managed it and off we were into the great, wide world. As the story goes, we had opened the latch of the front gate and walked hand in hand all the way to a busy intersection down the road, heavy with traffic in the mid-morning rush. The neighborhood vegetable seller was the one who caught us wandering in the end, holding us hostage by the garden wall, as my mother- finally catching sight of the widely gaping doors of the front gate- hurried to catch the escaped convicts before we were crushed to a chutney consistency by some passing lorry. Whether there were beatings or relieved hugs and kisses waiting for those delivered from the jaws of death is beyond the powers of my memory to recall, but what I do know to be certain is that this was to be the last such incident in both of our lives. A new chapter had dawned for both of us at nearly the same time. We were no longer the babies of the household as our ever-increasing families grew to welcome our younger sisters, and as is often the case, with the promotion came a heightened sense of responsibility.

As we grew older very few things changed between us. We continued to rule the roost of our increasingly populous pack of cousins, coming up with ridiculous and imaginative ways to entertain ourselves. Although we maintained the appearance of sparing equal attention to all of our cohorts, both we ourselves and all those who knew us closely knew that this was a well-maintained façade. I lived for his approval and he lived for mine. We were both the best of friends and the worst of enemies, standing up fiercely for one another when either one was attacked by the criticism of an outsider, and yet turning just as zealously on one another in contests to establish our superiority over the other. He was my closest confidante and I was his, and together we built our own world of understanding impenetrable to any outsider, including our respective parents.

The year when he was preparing for the dreaded 12th standard government examination, India’s vicious method of determining whether one goes on to college or not, was the start of the end of a beautiful relationship. I barely saw him that year when I went to visit as all the time he had those days was devoted to studying, eating and sleeping, with studying occupying a disproportionately large amount of that allotment. He was barely home that year, shuttling from school to tutoring to home on his ancient, though trusted, bicycle, only to repeat the cycle day after day, without rest. Although I was disappointed at missing the chance to see him after two long years, I sympathized as I knew the same process only awaited me when I returned to the States. I convinced myself to be patient- what could change between us between now and the next time I would get the chance to see him? He would still always be him and I would still always be me- school was just a minor roadblock. When we got the chance to meet again we would simply pick up the pieces and continue uninterrupted from where we left off.

In the end, it turned out that I was wrong. By the time we got to meet again, he was no longer himself and I was no longer myself. He had already spent a year in college- I was just about to begin collegiate life. We had changed a lot in the time since we last met and the childhood experiences that united us seemed ghostly specters we had left in the dust of the past for a very long time now. Our first and only meeting that trip to India was awkward- like that first middle school dance where the boys and girls are lined up on opposite walls, unsure of themselves and of each other. And now that I look back on it, even if we had gotten the chance to meet more often that trip, our subsequent meetings would still have been just as awkward. We had just missed too much of each other’s lives to remain relevant to each other any longer.

What happened between us? How could I have forgotten the boy who grabbed my hand and guided me to take my first steps into the real world? How could I have forgotten my best friend?

He was my closest confidante and I was his. And although we lived nearly 10, 000 miles away from one another, it was not the physical distance that would come to separate us in the end. No, in the end what separated us was the fact that we had become total strangers to one another, fumbling blindly in the dark to recover what we had lost between us.