Somebody I used to know

As much I would’ve loved to celebrate them, I thoroughly despised them. As much as I wanted you to get to know them, I wanted you to stay away from them. And as much as I wanted to hear everything about them, I didn’t want you talking about them at all. I knew they were such an important part of your new life; I knew how much they meant to you and knew that I had to let you experience their love.

But no. Some part of me, always opposed the fact that you wouldn’t be living your ‘old’ life. The fact that we wouldn’t have our sleepovers and parties at home. That we wouldn’t be able to smuggle chocolates into school and then play cricket using our math textbook and a crumpled paper ball. That part of me, the part that some call protective, very few adorable, and most people insanely jealous and insecure, is writing this today.

The idea of you leaving Manipal, was never alright with me. It never stuck with me; you could say. You were such a huge part of my life, such an immense influence, that I seldom thought we would be separated. It was always, you and I who rocked the party, you and I who could go at it forever, then turn around and make amends. You and I who could make merry out of the most boring class, and you and I, who would always have each other’s backs. I remember distinctively, how we would have our four-hour long phone calls, discussing how I could get that girl. And back then, it seemed like that was it. It seemed like there was nothing else that could supplement our perfect world. And it was true. That was as perfect as it could get.

For how many ever tears I shed, for how many ever letters I wrote, begging you not to go, I knew you couldn’t stay. I knew those letters would probably make things more difficult. You reading them and wanting to stay, me wanting you to stay, all those letters would lead to, would be drama. And so, I kept them with me. Even as you flew over the Himalayas, into the small country named Nepal. And thus, began the worst few months of my life, the months of transition.

With you in your new school, which seemed really fancy to the rest of us because of all the international students, with you living life at its fullest, chatting around with Amy, and Robin, and Rory and Mamadou, I felt happy for you, in the beginning. I knew you were very open, very friendly, and knew that you wouldn’t find it hard making friends. It was blatant, to anyone who knew you. And so, the days went on, I was stuck at your old school, without you, busy writing pages and pages of notes, and you were always busy, hanging out with your new friends.

But time flew, like it always does, and things changed. Drastically. From writing pages and pages into my notebook, I was now studying for the finals. And you, well, from spending all your time with your new friends, you were now spending even more time with them, attending sleepovers, weekly parties and watching a movie almost every other night. You had these petite nicknames like ‘Momo’ and ‘ammy’, and now knew these people like the back of your hand. I was kind of impressed with that. You had adapted to a new environment very quickly. You were having the time of your life in Nepal, from what I’d heard from you, and I was really happy that you were getting along with your peers so well.

But then came the twist, and it was certainly not something I could digest. You see, I was pretty vulgar when it came to my vocabulary. I was the ‘cool’ guy at school, the guy who always got the girls, the cricket captain, the guy who got straight A’s. I was the typical Bollywood hero. But every Bollywood hero is only as good as the comrade who has his back. Sadly, this comrade of mine, was busy talking to ‘ammy’ and ‘Momo’, and the Bollywood hero, he had to die out.

“It’s been so long. I haven’t spoken to you in ages. How are you doing man?”, I asked you, eagerly, just waiting to hear a response. You most certainly responded, but not at all in the way I thought you would. “Bro life, it’s just great. Amy and Lise, they are so amazing, so crazy, and the school, man don’t even get me started! We had a dance last night and I was grinding this cutlet all night long. Man it was da bomb.” I was taken aback, and cut the call, citing my exam as a scapegoat.

I googled the terms ‘cutlet’ and ‘bomb’, and couldn’t believe he was already committed. Then again, all his friends were from France, England, Ireland, Senegal and all the other exotic places you could think of. It wasn’t really a surprise.

The next, I called again, waiting for a response. I didn’t get one, so I tried again. “Man, I’m busy learning something new. Can we call later?”, I heard on the other end of the phone, coupled with muffled laughter galore. I put down the phone without uttering a word. And looked at the computer screen in front of me, in silence.

The next day was no better. Scrolling through my Instagram feed, the first thing I stumbled upon was you. You were wearing a hoodie. A brown one with a red hood. I remember this because I’d gifted it to you a few weeks before you’d left. As I looked at that hoodie, grateful that you hadn’t thrown it away yet, all was right with the world, I felt.

But I also noticed one other thing in that picture. No, it wasn’t them, wasn’t the way she had her arm around you, or the way you placed your arm around hers. It wasn’t the Manchester United jersey that Mamadou was wearing. It was smoke. I noticed smoke in the picture.

Now I wasn’t very tech savvy, or even Instagram savvy at that so it occurred to me that it was some random filter you guys used. But that wasn’t it. With that pen like structure, you were holding at the tip of your mouth, in a very stylish position, with smoke coming out of it, it seemed almost like you were smoking. Smoking with a pen?? “Good one”, I said to myself, as I laughed for even thinking that you’d try smoking. My mind had gone back to the anti-smoking campaign we’d run in school a year ago. You were the last person I knew who’d try smoking.

Then again, things do change, likings change as well. “Bro it was so enticing, I mean I can’t explain how fun that was. Vaping is cool! You need to try it. Amy does it so often, I mean it’s as often as you finish a packet of nuts”, I heard that night as you spoke so excitedly on the phone. I couldn’t believe it. In a month’s time, you had gone from being the most amazing person I knew, to smoking? It was surprising, how bad influence could change you, but then again, who was I to lecture you about it?

The coming days were no different. You’d started boasting about your triumphs in sexting. You’d apparently seduced one of my exes, and you could probably tell that I was the least impressed. Sending me screenshots after screenshots, as well as voice messages of her saying “I love you baby”, and whatnot, during our calls, I heard mentions of dildos, cigarettes, Cubans even, clubs, booze and a very colloquial term for the male sexual organ, as I later found out. I couldn’t believe my ears. I was on call with you every day. And was more disappointed as the week passed. The guy I’d known for five years, the guy who had walked with me everywhere I went, the guy who always had my back was trying to get a thirteen-year-old girl “laid”? it was appalling, and I couldn’t even tell if I was disgusted or irate.

I expected some kind of change in your behavior, maybe an accent or something. And I did see a very blatant change in the way you conversed. But never did I imagine this kind of a drastic transformation in you. Never could I imagine you with a cigarette, using vulgar words even I couldn’t understand. That was shocking. But that wasn’t everything. No, it was the entire cake but the cherry on top.

The icing on the cake was during our vacations. When I’d wanted to play a game of ‘Call of Duty’ with the gang and you said you’d be there. The game was kind of special for us because it was the first time we’d be playing together. We waited for fifteen minutes but you didn’t show up. I kind of expected that, to be honest. We played without you, and as heart-breaking as it was to not have the fourth and final member of our group, we knew we couldn’t depend upon you anymore.

I wanted not to doubt you. I wanted to like you. Wanted to talk to you. But, how could I? A guy who spent five continuous hours flirting with a girl and blew off his friends without a message, a guy who would do anything and everything to get a girl’s number, a guy who had apparently now started using words that I didn’t even know existed, a guy who had introduced me to the activity of vaping, and a guy who faked ID cards just to get that gin and tonic, this wasn’t a description of a sociopath, or any random man on the face of this earth. This was you.

You were a kind of person I didn’t even want to know anymore. And we did drift apart slowly. Our WhatsApp groups lie at the bottom of our respective chats, you went from my best friend ever, to somebody I used to know a while back, our calls went from once in two days, to, only if we needed each other’s help, and our football matches that we watched together were inexistent.

People told me I should’ve let you live your life in peace, without lecturing you as often as I did. They told me that it was wrong of me to even have tried to tell you what was wrong and what was right. They said I had no right to comment about you. Some people even blocked me, fearing I’d but into their lives and tell them how to live. It was sad that they felt that way. But Sankar, they were wrong. Because they didn’t know our friendship. They didn’t know how I felt. I did.

And I was called names for saying what I’d said. All kinds of names. People labelled me as insecure, jealous and just someone who couldn’t mind his own business. But I took it all on man. I took it on because I didn’t care about what each nosy individual had to say. I didn’t care about how their constant barrages of insults based on complete misinformation impacted my image. I didn’t care about how their verbal volleys tarnished my reputation. No Aditya, I didn’t care about anything they said or did.

Why? The answer was actually quite simple.

You see Aditya, all this while, I spoke to you out of love. Trying to tell you to mend your ways. It was sad to see you didn’t want to. I didn’t care about what anyone said anymore. But that wasn’t because they were wrong. It was because I didn’t care about them. I cared about you.

- A very insecure, ex-best friend.