In Memoriam – Ram

An unpoem, for my oldest friend

I can’t remember
the first time we met.
You were a few hours old, I was told.
I was all grown up by then, a huge three months.

And later too,
I don’t remember the first hi’s.
No akwardness even then
like we had always known each other
from back when.

Don’t you remember
rollerskating down the corridors
the lending library on the campcot
the hailstones which tried to catch?

I never quite managed, although you did catch a couple.

Much older then,
were you eight or nine,
when we couldn’t find cycles for kids
when we tried finding the tigers
when we were at Bharatpur
and my mum called you Aditya II
and yours called me Ram II.

Stronger than any blood tie it was,
christened with each others names.

I remember in school,
we used to sneak out at break,
buy orange toffees,
and spend the rest of the day
sucking them in class.

You were the bright boy,
the well loved clown,
the happy-go-lucky,
never-give-a-care one.

Older, never wiser,
out of school,
you used to come over,
and spend the day, the night,
talking, playing, awake,
and we fell asleep after
watching dawn break over my terrace.
And then when you were leaving,
at the bus stop, we’d wait,
route number 137 it was.
And when the bus came,
it was always too full,
and we’d wait for the next,
neither of us wanting the time to end.

You vanished once before,
for nearly five years,
abroad – that where you were,
another land, and you never were great
with long distance
and neither was I.
But you came back -
nothing had changed.

But it had, and I didn’t know.

The beaches in Goa still await,
the drive around the world hasn’t happened,
bus number 137 still runs,
fuller than ever.

Aren’t you going to catch some hailstones
with me again?