Friendship is a great thing to
have. Everybody thinks “en friend-a pola yaaru machan”. After sitting next to
the same person for about two years, you get to know about each other more than
you would wish to disclose. You get to fight really bad, become the partners in
crime and those few days when your neighbour is absent to school, you are bored
like hell. At the end of the school life, you realise that you had been friends
all along! Then on the farewell day, the promise of being in touch comes by. For
the next few years, through the college life, the circle grows little bigger
and you still hangout together. You join work and for a few months there is
absolutely no contact.
Out of the blue, this person
calls you and says he is getting married. You had been together in most of the
tough times till now. How would one let his friend take this punishment of
marriage, alone? So you are all geared up to attend the marriage. On the day of the
reception you go early and be with him when he gets ready. Many new people come
to the dressing room – friends from his work life and you are introduced to
those complete strangers. The reception starts and he gives grateful looks at
us for being there at this important juncture of his life! So there he is, on
the stage with his wife, welcoming the guests and there you are in the midst of
complete strangers. We discuss general topics first and those guys get lost
discussing platforms like Java and windows. The only platform you are aware of
is the railway platform, at the maximum, platform93/4 of King’s cross!
When
your thoughts start drifting away, you see familiar faces – people who studied
in other sections of the same class from the school. Then you remember “before
the two years this fellow spent with me, he had spent 10 years in some other
section”. There are greetings of “Hi Siddhart, how are you?” The real trouble
starts only now. You do not know their names. The face is so familiar, but the
name – not even worth a try! It would have been great if the conversation had
started as “hey I’ve seen you in prince school but forgot ur name” rather than “Hi
Siddhart,How are you?” You get involved in the conversation just to be abreast
with the names of the people you are conversing with. Red shirt – so and so;
Scene party – so and so; latest arrival – so and so; there is also an instance
when you fix a person with a name and just when you are sure of your guess, a
new arrival greets someone else with the name you had given to this person! Phew, that was close; When all these
things are running in your mind someone exclaims “hey look, so and so is coming”.
I look in the direction as everyone and notice someone with a familiar face and
checked shirt coming. He greets everyone, notices me and says “Hi Siddhart”. This
time I am prepared and I say “Hi so and so”. With a sullen face he says “I am
not so and so, I am ‘this and this’ and the so and so you are talking about, could
not find the address and I just brought him along!” there it goes and everyone
breaks out laughing! Suddenly the attention turns all towards you and everyone
wants to know if you got their name right. Now this is easy. You point at
people - red shirt (saying this in your
mind) so and so, Scene party so
and so, Latest arrival so and so, checked shirt so and so. Having passed
this test, you give a sigh of relief and before the sigh has left your lungs, a
new person joins and the crowd says “hey nobody call out his name, let’s see if
Siddhart gets him right”.
I quit!
If you attend a close friend’s
marriage, make sure you are acquainted with at least a few of his other friends!
