Loss Of My Best Friend Through Memories | Photo: Illustration by Anupriya Loss Of My Best Friend Through Memories | Photo: Illustration by Anupriya

Flocks of parrots and mynas having a full-blown turf war on the giant neem tree outside my window shook me out of my zone. I distinctly remember the day the neem sapling was planted during a plantation drive organised in my residential society a couple of years ago. This gentleman was among the few that survived.

The shrill voices of the birds shattered the evening peace. So much so that a bunch of monkeys sitting on the terrace of the opposite building were also looking in the direction of the tree. Behind the building, the sun was bidding adieu for the day. There were orange and yellow splashes in the sky. Evenings can be magical. Or melancholic. Personally, I love watching the sun melting in the sky. But that day, it made me sad.

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The news came in the morning, on February 2, 2025234bet. Of my best friend’s death. In a faraway city. I did not know at that point in time if it happened at home or in the hospital. But I imagined her in the hospital, silently leaving the world. A part of me wanted to cry, the other part told me not to; that she was free of all the pain and suffering she endured in the last three months.

Her absence on social media, unanswered calls and emails and unread messages had prompted me to get in touch with her family. Her papa informed me that she had been on a ventilator for the past two months, battling for her life, after a complicated stage-I cancerous tumor-removal surgery. Then came the news that she had slipped into a coma. I was numb. I prayed for her every day, but in my heart, I was prepared.

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I wanted to go to Bangalore and see her. Look her in the eye and tell her to be okay so that we could finally go for that trip to Turkey. A trip that had been in planning for years. But I wasn’t sure if I wanted that as the last memory of her—lying on a hospital bed, unconscious, surrounded by life-saving machines. We had been partners in crime. All along. I could write a book on the absolutely crazy things we have done. Including catching frogs on a rainy night in a forest in the Naxal belt of Hemalkasa in Maharashtra.

I wanted our last memory to be from that evening when we last met—in a café of a five-star hotel in South Delhi when she had come for her Asian Games selection last year. While sipping on very expensive mochas, we remembered our struggling days when we were interning in Bombay and survived on vada paavs for breakfast and lunch and an awful dinner served by our PG landlady. Our local train and BEST bus ride shenanigans deserve a separate chapter in the book. As does the night trek to Matheran. We also fondly remembered the last day of our internship. We went to Gaylords, Churchgate to celebrate. Because of a fund crunch, we were forced to share one pastry. An expensive chocolate orange midnight delight it was.

Memories. That’s all I have now. Of my best friend from post-graduation, who was a corporate hotshot and a Paralympian who won medals for the country in club throw.

***

The room was dark now. I switched on the light. To ease the heaviness of the dull evening, I lit a cinnamon candle. There was silence. There were things to do but my restlessness prohibited me from doing anything. The only reassuring thing that evening was the presence of my parents in the next room.

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Murakami’s latest book was staring at me from the side table. I picked it up and kept it down. Love you, Murakami, but not today. I am grieving. I opened Instagram. Then Facebook. Then Netflix. Then WhatsApp. Nothing helped. I tried crying but failed. I wasn’t sure if I was sad or angry. Angry because my best friend had left me alone. We had made so many post-retirement plans. There was a long bucket list.

Three cardboard boxes sat in a corner. Inside were my possessions. Mostly unwanted stuff, but things I could never discard. I am a hoarder. I left home many years ago. To study and to earn. But I had left pieces of my life behind. In these cardboard boxes. They occupied little space in the attic. The boxes were tolerated for a few years. Then, my parents told me to get rid of the unwanted stuff. A procrastinator, I kept putting off this task. Every time. Until the latest trip. The boxes were brought down from the attic even before my arrival and placed in my room. There was a hint of an ultimatum. The boxes were forgotten the next day when the news of my best friend’s death arrived. I opened the boxes nevertheless. To distract myself.

Memories tumbled out, one after the other. Photographs, diaries,7jogos greeting cards, slam books, letters, postcards, fridge magnets, coffee mugs, gift articles given by friends, and what not. I spent the next two hours sifting through all the stuff.

I read all the letters written by my friend from school to me when I used to visit Pune during summer vacations and she would go to Gwalior. Let’s call her ‘S’—the first human being I befriended. Initially, there were postcards. Then, in the teenage years, there were concealed, confidential letters. Letters where crushes were discussed. I smiled. For the first time in the day.

At the bottom of one of the boxes was a brown envelope. Carefully sealed. More secrets were about to tumble out. More memories. Secret memories. The Mickey Mouse-shaped eraser I had stolen from the girl sitting next to me in Grade 5 whom I absolutely hated. My first (and the last, I promise) theft. There were anonymous love letters that were left on my two-wheeler in college. A pine flower from Pahalgam with very fond memories attached to it and even a piece of stone from Bastar from the night that was spent in an open field looking at the twinkling fireflies during a work trip.

Then there was a book. Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea. I remembered this one. It was given to me by ‘S’. Her papa had gifted it to her when we were in primary—her prized possession. She did not bother to read it but she secretly gave it to me to keep it for life—as an ode to our friendship! And I did. I clicked a picture of the book and sent it to ‘S’ on her WhatsApp. She sent me a voice note—all I could hear was her laughter.

But there was more to the book that I just could not remember. Something was said when she handed me the book. I tried remembering. And then I did. Anxiously, I opened the book. There it was! The “jaali patta”! Tucked in between two pages that had turned yellowish. We were fascinated by this leaf in our childhood. There were many “jaali patta” trees near our school. I do not know the scientific name. It has largish leaves. The fallen leaves form a pattern that resembles a spider’s web. Hence the name “jaali patta”. We were told that if kept tucked for years, the leaf turns into a golden-coloured netted marvel.

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It hadn’t. It had dried completely and there was a faint netted pattern. That’s about it. What will happen if I pick it up? Or should I just let it be? I picked it up. It crumbled. Some of the dead remains fell on the floor. That was the end of the leaf.

I am an overthinker. Sometimes, it’s a curse. What did the crumbling of the leaf signify? That nothing is permanent. Not even our existence. The beautiful memory associated with the dead leaf helped me comprehend the sudden and tragic death of my best friend that morning. Her time was up and she was gone. But she left behind memories. Million memories.

That night, I read all our WhatsApp messages. Then I opened our mail thread—she had named it “S-M chatter”. Her idea was to pour our hearts out and share our deep, dark secrets here. And we did.

A tear, finally, trickled down when I read the last line of the mail she wrote in response to the emotional mail I had written to her on her birthday—the year she met with a road accident that left her quadriplegic; paralysed neck down. “Please write to me on all my birthdays, till my last breath,” she had written. I kept the promise. My last mail to her was on her birthday on January 12, 2025, when she was swinging between life and death.