Manor Of the Ardent

If you have seen F.R.I.E.N.D.S, you’ll surely recall this episode where Chandler and Joey win the rapid fire round and they get to live in Monika and Rachel’s apartment. This Blog is not about the episode or not even on F.R.I.E.N.D.S serial. I am writing this since I am badly missing my friends with whom I am not right now, whether they be from my childhood, college days, my Satyam friends or my room mates. I don’t know why, but I have been blessed with the best of people on earth when it comes to friends. I still wonder if I deserved to be their friend ever, but you bet I am not regretting even a second I spent with those people. I got carried away, you must be thinking how this particular episode is linked with the content of my Blog.

Well in this episode, Chandler and Joey win the quiz against Monika and Rachel; and as decided, they get to move into their apartment. It is not their victory, but their way of celebrating the victory which always makes me jealous in a way. They enjoy each and every moment of it to the fullest. They feel that they are the kings of the earth and there is nothing Superior to them. You know what, this feeling comes only when you are with your true friends. You can never enjoy 100% if you do not like even one person from the crowd which may be around you. Fortunately, I have always the best of people surrounding me in every such occasion. I make friends veryyyy slowly, I am not much of a talkative or extrovert person. But if I am friend with someone, that friendship last very long. But in this process, I sort of become dependent on my friends for some or the other purpose. If any of my friends cracks fabulous jokes, I always look forward to him when I need a dose of laughter. And when I am not near him right now, I have to search for external resources to make me laugh. If someone is very intelligent, he is my saviour in the difficult times of exams or projects. Right now I just try to find out ways of running away of the task if I am unable to handle. If some one’s thinking matches with me, I always expect him to take my side in any of debates. Sadly, there are very less of debates to take part nowadays.

This doesn’t mean that my friends, which are near me right now, are bad people and I don’t like them. I like them, love them, respect them as much as I could to myself. It is just that no one can substitute someone else. Sometimes I hear people saying that if you find your soul mate, you don’t need anybody else. You can spend the rest of your life on his shoulder/in her lap. But this fact is almost impossible to digest for me. I am sure I’ll never be able to find out such an incredible personality, which has to be sooooo much out of this world that she should be able to fill the vacuum which MIGHT be created if I have to be parted from such lovely friends. I don’t think that would ever happen. Neither I want it to happen. I am very selfish. Just for one such person, I am not yet ready to sacrifice sooooooooo many friends which I would never be able to acquire back even in seven births. Not yet.

With friends, you share your deepest secrets, you never have to lie about anything because they already know everything about you, you can wake them up at 2AM and ask them to prepare tea for you, you can gossip with them till 4AM about the hottie in the office, you can call them from the theatre and summon them there within 10 minutes to watch a movie which he thinks ’sucks’, you can do anything and everything with your friend, keeping his/her dignity in place. I hate it whenever I have to be parted from any of my friends who has been so near to me. It has happened a lot with me in the recent past and I am not enjoying even one second of this solitude. Always you have to be parted and ‘move on’. Yeah bloody Move On. I don’t have the Moving On mechanism installed in me for God’s sake. So why can’t I just stay with my friends forever. Why all of them have to leave one by one and I have to be dependent on the phone, mail or scraps to be in touch with them? Why I always have to look around when there is a superb topic taking place just right to strike a hot debate and there is no one around me with a difference of opinion and all I end up with people actually not having any opinion? Why I have to search my phonebook directory for people who ‘might’ be interested for accompanying for a certain movie for which anyone of my friends would have agreed happily? Why? I don’t have answers to this questions. I heard a joke long back about 3 friends lost on an island and a Genie asks them each for a wish. Two of them opt to go to some exotic place with unlimited fun and frolic. The third friend, however makes sure he doesn’t miss them by asking the Genie to call them back on the island. If this happens to me, I would ask the Genie to bring all of my friends on the island and make things such that we never have to be parted. I know that is never going to happen. I can only fool myself if I hold any such fantasies.

I don’t want to prove anything here not do I want to bring out any facts which might shock you. I am simply missing all of my friends. I pray (even though I am an agnostic), wherever they are, they always stay happy, smiling and as ever loved as they always are for me. Amin!!!