Unwanted Change!

Finally it was convocation time! The convocation was in short notice and I had to book my flight to India. I did my Masters from University of Mysore, India. Mysore is close to my heart for the moments I spent there. It was a perfect place and I had perfect friends. When my flight was booked for convocation, I had gone all nostalgic. We were ten foreigners in our batch. Except one friend, who wanted to pursue the PhD over there, all other friends had already returned to their own country. I would not have booked that flight for that one friend who was left over there with all those memories we had together. No other friends were coming to the convocation because of the distance, so I got the responsibility to be at that place. I wanted to meet him so bad. I was getting nostalgic over the memories. All the friends in my batch, we were so close to each other. We used to go out, eat together, make fun of teachers, laugh and just bully each other. Among them, Albed(name changed) was someone who used to help each of us. He was someone who used to make coffee and cookies and bring to class. It was because of him our class had turned into a bakery shop. He had madly fallen for a girl, who is my best friend. But the relation that he used to share with me was also special. We used to joke and laugh all the time. He was my jogging partner. And guess what! He used to bring all those cookies, tea and cake that he used to make to jogging that sometimes I used to get confused if I would lose or gain weight, for jogging with him. He was like a buddy to me! I used to make dough for him to make the cookies. I never forget that once he brought his oven to my house to make cookies together. I will never forget how he spent almost three hours teaching us (we were four in the closed group including him) just one page of econometrics and we all had gone mad. We did our project work together. I will never forget the library session of ours, where we went once and we spent most of our time clicking photos. And once we made tea in pressure cooker and took it to a friend's house in bike to drink it while watching football. His home was like ours. We could go at any time we like, cook, drink and laugh. He was very close to me, but I never intervened in his personal matter. When everything was over, and we had to return to the respective country, our group was almost together. We used to go everywhere together for shopping, eating and drinking. Albed was a bit emotional and he had started to cry before a week of my leave. It was during the Ramadan, where he had to take fast for whole one month. It was an emotional moment for me when he broke his fast for a day for me on the day of my leave. He wanted to share every moment and every second with me. At the end, all my friends came and we cried and shared very special moment together. All my friends came to train station to say me good bye and I still remember their face. Me and my friend sat in Albed's bike and I still remember how he drove wiping the tears with one hand. I still remember Albed's face. Those beautiful and touchy moments that we spent together is still encarved in my heart. When I came back I had regular contact with other friends but not with Albed. He didn’t use to talk to me much. He had somewhat changed. I always thought the loneliness changed him. When we all returned, he had no friend at Mysore. That’s why, I wanted to meet him and relive those moments together. I wanted to give him company and assure him that friends do meet.

However, things don’t go as planned. I had thought it would be so much fun to meet my friend but during my 10 days of stay, I met him only  four times and that also for two or three hours only. He didn’t want to meet me. His ignorance made me question myself if he is my friend or a stranger? I had sensed he had changed but he had changed completely. Before his house used to be a complete mess and now it was clean. He was such a freak out person, spontaneity was in his blood but there was nothing like that now. He didn’t want to share anything with me. In fact I could sense he was irritated when I went to his home. The worst moment for me was the time when I went to his home and he closed the door on my face. One part of my heart would say just to scold him and leave him. One part of my heart would say that he is hiding so much of pain and he is not telling me. But he had become impossible to penetrate. Every time I talked to him, I was mentally disturbed through his coldness and strangeness. How could a person change like this and what on earth made him change like this? It was not only me that he reacted like this. It was with every friend. He doesn’t talk with us anymore. I cannot even be angry with him for what he did to me. Because I think may be he is going through depression, he needs me and I am not there. One time he told me his reaction was because I brought the bad memories to him. And guess what? He even didn’t come to say me good bye.

Mysore was such a dull place to stay. The place once a heaven for me had become a deserted place. And then I realized some places and some friends are only good in memories!!