| 22 January 2010
It was the day that every aspirant was waiting for. It was the day that would either write one’s fate with golden letters or wash away one’s fate with tears. It was the Judgment day. The day when the result of JK CET would be out!
Kudos to all you guys who lock themselves with their books for two years. Phew! That's hard work sure, but I feel that half the trees in Kashmir are felled each year to make all the crap for CET. On judgment Day, while all CET aspirants sat in front of their radios listening carefully to the results, I too sat there transfixed and nervous. I was the least bothered about my result, but rather the question of life and death was to be decided any moment now, the thin line between fulfillment and heart break was going to fade, and what was being decided was the fate of MY BEST FRIEND.
And there it was the MERIT LIST right before the reader's eyes… I somehow wished I could go back into time, turn the clock back a few hours, shut the announcer's mouth… give myself a little more time to breathe, for I was falling short of breath.
I heard the MBBS list as my head gave nods of disapproval each time. Relax… I told myself and went on hearing… eyes unable to blink…my nails biting into the flesh of my clenched fists. How my ears were dying to hear that beautiful name just once… Just once…that's all I seemed to ask of life. Not knowing how soon life was to become barren and how we would learn that life can really change in a single day…
I felt the heat escape from me while sweat shined on my brow. I couldn't believe it… "This isn't happening" I wanted to tell myself as I heard the announcer announce "and that's the end of MBBS open-merit list." The world seemed to go black for me, my eyes were blind, my fingers were numb…this wasn't happening…it's just a bad dream, right? Unfortunately this was reality, the bitter reality that the dream my best friend slept with each night, and the dream which she woke up with in her eyes, was no more hers.
I was taken back into time to a couple of years when we were quite younger, still in school. I could hear something… thud…thud…the sound of my basketball dribbling incessantly on the tarmac. The ball I held in my hand held my life within itself. Until I could keep it bouncing, I felt my heart beat, and when it would seize to bounce, my heart would seize to beat. That was basketball for me, my life…my whole world. What a great euphoria it was…what a happy existence! And that's what I did the whole day, played basketball. I would reach the school at 6 in the morning to play basketball, I'd bunk the assemblies, I'd skip my lunch, I'd stay back after school … to hear my heart beat as the ball bounced back into my hands. But all along the time that I was absorbed in my own world, a pair of the most beautiful eyes watched me…they were dreamy, hazel eyes of MY BEST FRIEND …they longed for a friend who was lost in a world of her own, a euphoria without an end. There on that little window sat my friend perched like a little bird waiting for a friend to return from the world of the lost.
And I played on, lavishing the adrenaline rush, giving my best time of life to basketball…only to realise years later that the person to whom I owed that time was…LOST.
Yes, I lost her, we all lost her. LOST… I wish I could make you understand what it means. It means that I can no longer see those eyes staring down at the playground waiting with warmth to embrace a friend, that I can never see her except in dreams, but her voice is what I pine for most…I will never be able to hear that voice again…never. Yet her words still resonate in my ears… "padoge likhoge banoge nawab… kheloge kudoge hojavogay kharab…"
But no, I never heeded to her words. I enjoyed life, every moment of it. Bunked classes, picked up fights, flunked exams and most of all I loved her. And she…she loved her parents. So while I slept, she burnt midnight oil, when I played basketball, she revised her lessons, while I squandered money, she saved it thinking of the hard work her Daddy put into it. That's the kind of person she was, too sweet an obedient daughter. Too obedient, I would tell her. She always remarked at my naughty suggestions… 'What will Daddy think? Keep the phone, Daddy might be calling me..."
Her parents were her world, and basketball was mine. My heart would beat wilth the thud of the basket ball; hers was in resonance with the hearts of her parents. Her pulse resonated with theirs…her brain waves were under the control of those two hearts. But maybe they didn't sense it as I did. How much she loved them…more than I loved her probably!
I lost my friend to a petty entrance test… The heart that resonated with two other hearts had missed a beat… That day even the rain could not hide my tears. It was the second time I cried in my life.
The first time I cried had been when I heard her name in the Merit list. Just when I was about to switch on the radio I heard it… last name in the open merit list for BDS. She had just managed it…Goodness! I was relieved…Tears wouldn't seize…
I wanted to practice how I'd face her…Look.. Kabhi kisi ko mukammal jahan nahi milta.." Yes, I'd sing….No! How's this "Life says yes and gives us what we want, life says no and gives us something better, life says wait and gives us the unimaginable!!!"…Oh! I was confused, so I bought a little card and reached her home. Her daddy welcomed me, delighted and quite content. And her mother came and greeted me…she was not very happy …somehow I felt she was being too harsh. Not knowing that this harshness was one day to take a life!
I went to her and said, congratulations!!! "Thank you" she said…and she seemed so happy and content that I was surprised. I thought she'd make a big fuss out of it, after all she had spent years dreaming the same dream night after night…night after night.
What a wonderful person she was -- loving, obedient, with a heart that beat for her parents. She didn't need my words...she had a few words to tell me. And how I wish today that her mother could know how much she loved her…
To think that time would kill her …that she would be found in her room with a colored piece of glass…my gift to her with our names on it…drenched in her blood … To think it then was impossible, but that's how life is, that's how things can change in a day… The last I had heard from her was that after she had been allotted BDS in Jammu and after she had bought her books, her father was persuading her to give another try for MBBS…another entrance…another year…
Not that her mother and father didn't love her…they loved her too much to see her become anything less that a Cardiovascular surgeon running around saving peoples lives…not knowing that one day she would wish she had just saved that one life…
That entrance test left a void in my universe. It punched a hole right through my world, right through my heart and that day the ball stopped dribbling…for my heart had missed a beat, all our hearts had missed a beat…We were all guilty…How I wished I would have lived in the real world close to her. How her father wished fate could have spared his daughter. He wanted to say that she was not a failure, that he was really proud of her. But most of all, how her mother wished she would just be alive…How she had realised that an alive dentist or even a vet was lot better that a lost daughter…a dead child.
It is the human being who gives definition and form to things he achieves and accomplishes. And achievements don't define a person; a person defines professions as noble or good by his deeds and works. It the person is dead, achievements and ambitions don't mean anything…they too are dead and buried.
So, if your child is there with you and if she has always tried to keep you happy, then thank God. For, a live child whom you can touch, see, hear, even scold is lot better than a dead one…for whom you can only pine…
When will we stop judging children by their grades…by their GPA's…by their Entrance test points? When will we spare our future generations of what we were not able to spare those pair of the most obedient eyes…that heart which resonated with those of parents?
Looking at this years merit list, I was reminded that the world was still the same… there still were entrance tests…there were the unlucky ones who were left out of the list and the lucky ones who just managed to get in. But were there still parents who would want more from their children, more than what God had written for them?
And from high above somewhere laughing cynically at our madness, I see a poet seated in the garden questioning us:
"tere darya mein tufan kyun nahin hai?
khudi teri musalmaan kyun nahin hai?..."
Why don't we trust Allah? Why is it that we always want more from our children? Why don't we have faith to accept that everything from Him is BEST for us? Why don't we remember the Faith of Abraham (A.S) when He took his own dear son to slaughter in the name of God?
And so I lost …my best friend …to expectations …
Tonight the moon seems strange. Once we both would be looking at it thinking of each other, but today I have been left to look at the moon all alone, while the moon mocks at my loneliness!
This story was published by The DailyGreater Kashmir Newspaper on Friday, January 23, 2009.