F.R.I.E.N.D.S

Remember my post wondering how my writing is going to be viewed by others (specifically my daughter, but generally, by all loved ones) when I fade and pass?

Well, a wisp of a memory from 1994 came floating through the air like a stray feather this morning when I found this in my WhatsApp chat, shared by Swarup Gokhale from a time when we all said goodbye on the last day of engineering college.

I used to write long-hand letters to my friends back then, sometimes as long as 8-10 foolscap pages (this brief one is a rarity) and would receive equally long replies. We would discuss politics, art, literature, relationships, our families, our dreams, our loves, our memories, and so on. And we would vow to stick together through thick and thin. What happened, then? Ah, life happened.

But once in a while, from the mists of time, like it happened today, a small memory comes by. And makes my day. My week. My month. Even my year.

For reference: I wrote and directed the Marathi play our college entered into the Firodiya Karandak 1994. Swarup was part of the orchestra and played the tabla. He was a fantastic tabla player. I was a horrible director.

P.S.: I have a (rather filmy) story about Swarup. It is about how, when it came to the crunch, he stood firmly by me when almost all had abandoned me in a foreign land. It is also about the time when I was penniless in Dubai (after having run a transnational company turning over hundreds of millions of dollars, all of which went bust during the 2008 meltdown), pining for home, and on the verge of being arrested, and how two things came out of nowhere to bail me out: Swarup’s benevolence. And a lucky poker hand. But that’s for my book.