Going To

In the earlier one I described how I spent all my life in this society in the company of my best friends. I distinctly remember saying that the time we usually spent together was in the evening. Wonder why? Well, the answer is obvious. All seven of us did not go to the same school. As a matter of fact, Winnie went to the same school as Bogies and Silver, but the rest of us had a school each. Pillar, me and Mind-It went to different institutions to seek knowledge. BB spent a couple of years in my school but then switched to someplace else.

I wonder how kids manage to switch at all. One day you have an identity in your class and the next you are the new boy who has to sit on the back bench by himself. I would never have considered changing my school, no matter how much a pain in the neck it felt at times. When I used to get a little too angry with my school, my father used to calm me down by explaining how other schools were no less of a pain. Anyway, on reflection, I used to conclude that mine was a good school, most of my teachers were good, pleasant and competent, and most of all I had another set of great friends there.

Ours was a small school; our class contained only about twenty-six students on average, let alone divisions. In the period of twelve years I made friends with a variety of my classmates, and a few of them I am still in close contact with. Coincidentally, I can think of six friends here, too, on reflection when I consider who meant the most to me. It seems that I am considerably fond of the concept of a seven-member group. Keeping the code system intact, I will mention who those six are. I like to think of them as Plez, Peaky, Sugar, Tom, Ray and Basque. Once again, I will refrain from mentioning what they called me. (Or what they would call me if they heard I named them so).

Unlike my society, this was not a technical group we kept at school. Such groupism cannot thrive when there are so few of us to start with. I like to think that our entire class was one mega-group, and we were all on last-name terms with each other (that may sound odd but is not alarming and perfectly normal). But these are the people I felt most comfortable with. Allow me to give you a clear idea as to why.

When I first joined this school, it was a very small local institution with a faculty of only ten people and four classes. The KG’s and the first. Our school grew as we progressed, and we have been proud to witness every moment of it’s glorious expansion. Nevertheless, when I first joined our class had only four of us : me, Plez and two other girls. If I recall correctly, Peaky joined an year later and Sugar in the year after that. Two years later we had a load of newcomers, which also presented to us Tom and Ray. I simply cannot remember when Basque came in, for the obvious reason that he was definitely not my friend then.

I cannot quite remember how I first met Plez. It’s somewhat like trying to remember when you first met your parents, provided that your birth was an exception. As far as I can remember Plez has always been around. He has always been an unchallenged master of the harmonium and a dab hand at painting. Beyond that, I always liked his company because I never felt like an emotional fool with him. While guys like Sugar, Ray and Peaky would act all practical even when there was no one else around, Plez never hesitated to confide his deepest secrets in me, which made me tell him mine, too. Touchy subjects are broached only when you trust the other person to take them to his grave. We exchanged our honest opinions about certain classmates and also whom we fancied or had crushes on. As a matter of fact, he actually advised me to drop my crush, and gave me the benefit of an unbiased view. I returned the favour. All I can say is that our close friendship prevented us from embarrassing ourselves, and each is grateful to the other.

Peaky is the happiest friend I have. As a matter of fact, I have never seen him smile or beam. He just grins. Or smirks. Perhaps, I thought, it was his thick eyebrows which gave him a permanent sly look. This only worked to his advantage, because only the people who know him well can tell when he's not smirking. Like Plez, I cannot firmly remember when I first met Peaky. But I can surely tell where we became the best of friends. Not in school, but in Muktangan Exploratory Science Centre, which we had joined as ‘enthusiasts’. In our first year we were accompanied by another friend from our class, not to mention my cousin and her gang. It all changed into a batch of complete strangers in the second year and boiled down to just the two of us in the third year. Here is a best friend who has lived my adventures with me, from sniffing Ammonia on a dare to working with other dangerous chemicals. I cannot quite remember what all I learned about science in there, but I learned a great deal about my buddy. Peaky was also popular with my family. Incidentally, he is the one friend who’s name my granny never forgets, because he used her book on Sanskrit for his study. I went to watch a movie with him an year after we left school and was glad to find him as decent as he always was. We shared an auto back, and he returned my parting wave with the same old smirk.

It was a while into Class V when Sugar decided to stick to me. He is very sweet on the inside, adds hilarity to almost all occasions, and also very sticky at times. He used to follow me everywhere around the school. He had that uncommon knack of enlightening the atmosphere by making a fool of himself. He enjoyed being my faithful sidekick, but a while later (a surprisingly short while) he decided that we were equals, as we were from the very start. But we continued to share benches and lunches everything else. He used to take our cheek very calmly, and admit his whatever-it-was. That made us all relent, and it was all arms-in-arms again. Gradually he started to cheek back, and it was as if some invisible tension had relaxed. According to my mother, he was the most innocent friend I ever had, and still is, no matter how tough he tries to make himself look. I felt obliged to remind him that we all liked him as he was, and he went back to being Sugar. In our presence, anyway.

There was this year when our school had a big hit on some other local school. That returned to us the girl who’d gone there, and also threw in a bunch of new people. That was when I first met Tom and Ray. Tom is that sort of guy who you think is tough and indifferent, but his earnest smile tells a different story. As far as I remember, he could compose poems too. Ray, on the other hand, had an amazing unconscious wit and it is always great to have him around at anything. He took German, just like me, and I remember one occasion when we all went to a German students’ event to sing a song at the request of our teacher. Apart from our dreadful performance, the whole trip was worth it just to watch Ray on form. Choosing German was I guess the one thing he did differently from Tom, who took Sanskrit instead. They were always together in everything else. They even faced the same punishment for doing the same homework prior to instruction. Some dedication. Of all the names I’ve given as yet, these are the ones which I’ve imported. I don’t know which Tom and Ray made me apply these names to these fellows, but I’m happy with my choice anyway. I’m sure they’d be happy too.   

Basque became a close friend of mine no earlier than in class IX, as before that I always regarded him as an average student usually at the bottom. I’ll be damned if I considered this as a deciding factor, but I had experience of such people usually being very mean, horrid and undesirable. Then one day he told me he watched Masterchef Australia too, and all these misconceptions were instantly dissolved. Then I shared a bench with him for the next two years, and all that time spent together made me wonder why I even considered him average in the first place. He composed a fantastic free verse poem once, to go with mine for the school magazine. I guess his understanding of English is much developed than my other friends, having watched the same shows and movies that benefitted me. He was also a basketball champ, and was always chosen first in any team when they let us play it. (I was chosen last, but that is completely beside the point). He shares my love of Hollywood, cars and skyscrapers, and is always willing to enlighten me on these. I couldn’t meet him for an year and a half after we left school. It’s not like I felt hollow all that while, but now I definitely feel full and more happy since we regained contact.

One of the dark aspects of growing up is that suddenly your friends begin to act all strange up to a point where you suddenly hate being in their company. I had that experience with the rest of my class; the ones I’ve not mentioned here had gone all creepy and developed liking for things I could never dream of sharing. But that did not bother me much as they were never close to me anyway. What made me appreciate the gravity of all this was how my new friends, most of them girls, all tell me how they enjoy my company extensively as all their other friends had turned nasty. I was quite shocked when I realized these things, and then hurriedly glanced at these guys. I was relieved to find them as decent, nice and friendly as I had known them. The ‘likings’ are not a grave issue if you admit that they are phases of life and grow out of them. We all did. As for ‘creepy is cool’, you don’t need to take that line if you continue to make friends with decent people. All these guys have introduced me to their new friends, who are very similar, and I hope to introduce them to my collection one day. Now if someone tells me how much they admire my staying the same way, my only ‘defence’ is that I grew up with six others who have also stayed the same.

Unlike the society, the prospect of the final separation does not worry me too much in this case. Mainly because it has already happened. But other reasons can be found in the instances later on. I invited them to my birthday party and they arrived all smiles, and it was fun to watch them bickering like kids on the group when I invited them. Tom, who was overwhelmed, immediately invited us to his birthday, and we spent both occasions recalling the past and foul-mouthing those absent. Sugar called me once when he was in the neighbourhood, and we had a great chat, just like old times. Basque pinged me only last month and we immediately got to talking about our tastes as if no time had passed. I joined Peaky and his friend for a movie and watched as my dear friend told his friend all about my writing with a touch of pride. I was only too glad to reciprocate. I ran into Plez once on a bus stop, and he told his friends to go on so that he could ride with me. Then I ran into Ray who invited me to his sister's wedding. I remember all this, and only one thought comes to my mind. So what if we don't meet every so often? As long as these glorious instances continue, we will never be separated. What started with us going to school together, will end only when we are going to.

From the school to junior college on goout