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Wednesday, April 07, 2004
Friendship lasts forever, but some friends don't......
S was a classmate of mine in first year engineering (i think second year also)...Though not a close friend or anything like that, we got along well...He dropped a year, and thus became my junior in college. However, S continued to hangout with my group of friends.
S came from a rather humble background. He had lost his father quite early in life, and his poor mother had struggled to bring S and his sister(s?) up. S was the eldest, and the only son. His family commitments were, in a way, the reason for his dropping a year in engineering....Later, i learnt that he dropped out of engineering since he had to work to support his family.
Years passed, and I graduated out of the college, got a good job and was pushing a new life.
It was a day in 1998, when another one of my classmates from college called me up......
S had managed to find some odd job or the other, while looking out for that special break that would finally help him get his sisters married, and put a smile back on his defeated mother's lips . He had, finally in 1998, managed to find that dream job that was to be his answer to all his family's problems: he had got a job in the Indian embassy in Washington. Though it was a lowly job, it was enough to help him and his family realise their dreams..S was expected to fly out the next day - Sunday - from Bangalore. But fate had other plans for him...........
On the previous evening (Saturday), S took all his friends out for booze and dinner at one of the dhabas outside the city..I had lost touch with him by then, and hence was not part of that group. Late at night, S was riding back home with his friend on his Yezdi Road King bike when.......
......to say that we would all be meeting up at S's house in an hour's time for one final farewell. Incidentally, S's friend was wearing a helmet & had survived the crash.....
This memory is dedicated to a friend who I didnt really know too well, but wish I did. RIP my friend.
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