I recently lost an
extremely close, dear friend of mine to indescribable circumstances. But let me
tell you right now that this piece is not about him because I have yet to come
to terms with the fact that he is no longer here. Only then can I proceed from
there to find the words to describe just how amazing a person he was and how much
he meant to everyone who knew him, especially me. You see, this is about the
true love and friendships that shone through for me at the time when I got the
news and through the days thereafter.
The day that it happened, I
was far away – far away from home, far away from my phone, far away from the
knowledge of all this. I was in Canacona at the time, on work, and because I
had been running around all day, the battery on my phone was exhausted. So by
the time I put my phone to charge and it came on and I got the news, it was
late evening. The shocking news coupled with my tiredness, threw me on to the
brink of hysteria and I broke down, sobbing louder than I ever have before. My
first call was to my parents, who immediately said that they were going to hop into
a cab and come get me as they didn’t want me driving back in such a state. But
that plan was quickly averted with the arrival of my knights (and lady) in
shining armour. My oldest friend Aneesh and his better half Stacey, who were in
the middle of showing some friends of theirs (who were holidaying in Goa) what
the not-so-crowded areas of Goa looked like, dropped all their plans to drive
me back home, no questions asked. They let me cry until I could cry no more,
put me in the car and talked me through the entire drive home. Stacey even took
to answering and screening all my phone calls as the news began to spread and
random people started to call and ask if it were true…
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Now, given how late in the
night we left, it was no wonder that we were closing in on 11 o’clock at night
by the time we reached home. But I still needed to see my friend’s family for
myself; I couldn’t leave it till the next day, no matter how late it was.
Without even thinking about their guests, Stacey offered to have Aneesh drive me
there and he echoed the same thought before she even asked him. And drive me he
did, waiting ever so patiently in the car (as he didn’t know the family well
enough), whilst I sat with them for a good hour or so…
The next few days were a
blur – what with the shock of it all, various arrangements having to be looked
into and, more shockingly, the random calls still coming in. It actually got so
bad that I had to put up a pretty nasty post on Facebook telling people to
leave me alone. And it was in those moments that I realised who my true friends
were. They were the people who sent messages instead of calling. They were the
ones whose messages read “How are you? I’m here if you need to talk” and not
“Is it true what I heard? Call me back when you get this”. Agreed, not many
people knew just how close we were. But it was the true friends that had the
tact and sensitivity to know that they had to save the questions on our
equation for later; for a time when I was ready to talk. I remember catching up
with another friend, Darryl, the evening before Palm Sunday and him saying, “My
first thought was, does Ayesha know? If not, who is going to tell her?” For me,
these are my true friends. The ones who stood by me through this massive down;
the ones who let me cry and laugh in the same breath and didn’t tell me to “get
over it”; the ones who didn’t dig for details but let me vent when I felt the
need to; the ones who hugged me back when I was holding onto them for what
seemed like an eternity. In addition to Aneesh, Stacey and Darryl, I hope the
others know who they are and just how much they mean to me in the wake of this
tragedy. And most importantly, I hope they know that I am deeply and forever
grateful to them and I love them more than ever!
