Oh friends, we care for you!

It has already been 1 week since university lectures resumed. And during some free time which we got in between lectures, we usually meet and chat with classmates and other students on the campus. It was during one of these time slots that I met an old friend, whom I had lost contact for some time.

She had just joined university last semester and was quite the kind of humble, not-so-talkative girl (from a stranger’s perspective). From the look, she was definitely not Miss Universe; nevertheless, I’ll say she was much better than the Miss Mauritius contestants. But she definitely had a big heart with enough space for all her friends, this I am sure! For the sake of her privacy, I’ll refer to her as Shreya.

While catching up for the time we have not been in contact, the topic turned into some kind of not-so-happy moments that she is currently going through. And it all revolved around friendship. Shreya’s parents, as most others, wanted their daughter to achieve big in life through the best possible education they could afford for her. And as a result, every weekday after college classes, she had countless private tuition; the weekends were full day tuition days. Therefore, the only time she could use to make new friends was during tuition, of course, without her parents being aware of it, their belief being that friends are there to move your focus from studies.

Call it coincidence if you want, there was a guy who was in almost the same situation as Shreya and both teenagers were taking tuitions the same places and time for almost 75% of the time. And naturally they became not just friends, but the best friends in the world. We’ll call the boy, Jimmy.

They started to use all the time they had left to talk and talk…talks that usually revolved around their dreams of their future life. Shreya wanted to become a lawyer while Jimmy wanted to be a doctor. And then one afternoon, Jimmy was not to be seen at tuition; he was someone who was rarely late and Shreya got really worried, something must have happened to him, something bad…and the girl prayed, she could not follow the tuition at all; her eyes were both filled with tears. And her teacher, who considered her as one of his best student noticed that something was wrong with her. He asked whether she was alright, Shreya could not even speak…she just nodded her head affirmatively. And that evening, she didn’t shut her eyes the whole night. It’s going to be only the next afternoon that she will get the opportunity to meet Jimmy again to know what happened. Until then, all bad things went through her mind; what could have happened to her best friend…

And that afternoon, came Jimmy with a beaming smile and Shreya felt immediate relief, he was fine, thank god! And before she even had the opportunity to ask what happened, Jimmy had already felt the question coming and happily told her about the amazing day he had the day before; some classmates and him skipped college classes and went to play at a nearby ‘LAN’ (where gamers usually play in teams on computers connected through a local network). And they stopped playing at around 5pm…too late for tuitions, that’s why he didn’t come to tuition the previous day.

Shreya just could not believe it, Jimmy skipped a class…Knowing her rather well, Jimmy knew that Shreya was not pleased at all with what he did and he told her that was the first and last time. But the gaming taste was too good for Jimmy to stop it just for the sake of pleasing a friend. Nevertheless, he promised to himself that he won’t go to play on LAN again. But the gaming urge was still there…and Jimmy borrowed the games on CDs from his friends and started playing on his home computer.

Little by little, he became so entrenched in his games that everything else had lost their importance. Shreya became just ‘a friend’ just like the dozens of friends he had. For him, his ‘best’ friends were now unknown people thousands of kilometers away, playing with him through the internet. Even his family was no more important; he has no time to talk to his dad, mum or brothers and sisters; as soon as he reaches home, he goes straight into her room, his parents believing that their son is studying hard. He would play during the whole of the nights, and naturally felt sleepy at college.

And he distanced himself from Shreya. The latter desperately wanted her best friend back, but an invisible barrier prevented that to happen. And Jimmy’s academic performance had drastically fallen but he just didn’t care. And when Shreya tried to talk to her, he had the pre-recorded answers: “it’s my life, not yours”, “none of your business, I do whatever I want”. But these few words were enough to break Shreya; she could see the friendship she valued so much being torn apart by the very person that she trusted more than herself. And this time she could not stop her tears…she cried…and when she was telling me what happened, I could clearly see tears in her eyes, more than one year had already gone by when she ‘lost’ her best friend, and she was still crying for him, and praying that he becomes the doctor he used to cherished in his dreams.

Oh friends, we suffer and cry for you.

Please don’t be so selfish towards us…

#end