Friendship is such a special bond, to the point where people want its characteristics to be tick marked in other relations they have in their lives as. Some last beyond expectations, till the last days of phone calls, some don’t with priorities and responsibilities.
The way people move from one thing to another, even places, human bonds may have lost that first place priority, or if it is there, it has some hard competition.
Back to friendship, they last and they don’t, but the hardest thing is to realise that it is time to end, because things change whether for good or bad.
Ekansh and Jai knew each other since school, but they became close friends from their working years and there was a mutual feeling that this was going to last, since neither of them had plans to leave their families and find work elsewhere.
Yes, this is where things change. Jai had been in a relationship with a girl for years. He indicated it as being nothing serious, but then he was talking of marriage, and things took a turn for a lot worse with Jai’s family not agreeing to it.
Ekansh asked Jai to give it time but Jai was a bit weak to persistence, and the girl was in a hurry. Jai ran off from home, got married and after a few years returned with a kid.
Ekansh had kept in touch with Jai meanwhile, trying to ignore the wrongs and pretend that everything was fine but Jai had not returned the same man.
Jai and his wife had decent income but they had become addicted to a more affluent lifestyle that they couldn’t afford. There were the obvious debts but the surprising lack of realisation, not to mention more insistence on what Jai’s wife preferred. Cars, foreign trips, expensive clothes, partying around, all on credit cards and the debt only kept increasing, sometimes managed but mostly out of hand.
Ekansh had been quiet through most of it, occasionally trying to pass a helpful advice or two to deaf ears and now it had started to become uncomfortable with what felt like otherworldly talks.
There is a difference of maturity between earning a place somewhere and just trying to get somewhere with the shortest but far costlier route to end up not realising its value in the first place.
Ekansh had thought that after marriage there would be more people to share this bond of friendship but things had taken a different direction. He realised he could not associate with this person he called his friend anymore.
Ekansh created an intentional space, calls were not picked, there were made up reasons not to meet and the bond faded with time, but the memory of a once good time, was preserved in the mind of Ekansh.
Written by Anuran Chatterji
Early Morning Memories 