Friends… I have to admit that friendship is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. And anyone who has so trustworthy friends is always the luckiest. Now we can’t help it that looking for such a good friend is somewhere near impossible. But it isn’t exactly impossible. The path is full of thorns, but at the end of it you surely get a spa for your bleeding feet. But some fortunate people get a direct pass to treasured friends. Well, Shruti was one of them… best friends for life, without any struggle. As in she and her friends were made for each other. Born to meet.
Here is Shruti's story in her words...
In my life, they were the closest to me. After any of the bad incidents, I could come to them with tears in my eyes, and left with a laugh and a solution for my problem. In the rarest of the occasions, when there was no way out, they still anyhow made me smile and forget everything. They were the one who knew every segment of me. It was just impossible to hide anything from them. They could read my face out. The same went with me.
We were five of us – me (Shruti), Deeksha, Tanya, Sarah and Ritika. Heaven had shattered on me the day I found that I am all alone in this world. And this time they were NOT there for me for the first time. I felt helpless. But at a moment I felt that I am alone but not lonely. They were there. Somewhere around me. I could feel them but not see them. They gave me this power to move on and build up a successful life. Someone from us had to stay back in this world and tell everyone ‘The Story of us’.
It had been a week Tanya had not been to college. We tried to call her but the phone always said “The number you are trying to call does not exist. Please check the number and try again”
“What shit is this?” we always thought. This was the number we always used to try to contact her, and suddenly how could it become a wrong number? We had to solve this mystery and thus all of us decided to look for her at her place. But boom! The door wide open but no one in the house. We asked the neighbors that do they have any idea where Tanya and her family are. But they were like - who Tanya. They did not know that a girl was living there with her family since 15 years. All that they knew was that the place was abandoned from a long time. The furniture had also vanished. We were taken aback. It was something beyond the realm. When we informed our parents that Tanya had disappeared along with her family, even they were like – Who Tanya? Now this was again something not possible. We even went to the police, but they said that the house belonged to no one in this world and they have no idea, from where the house came up from. It was illegally built there. Police also said that the Tanya we were talking about did not exist and neither her family did. We got bells from the blues when we found out that the snaps we had shot together lacked Tanya. She was not there even in the images. The police declined to take up the case as it was completely pointless for them to file a missing complaint for a person who never existed. This was very strange. We finally had to admit that witchcraft was interfering with our lives. But no one was ready to believe us. This caused us a lot of grief. We had lost a great friend. No one, no one could ever fill the vacuum caused in our lives because of her disappearing like this.
Now we had not even recovered fully from this shock and grief, we heard that Ritika was murdered! She was found hanging from the ceiling of her hostel room. But she did not kill herself. The postmortem reports said that she was killed by increasing amount of carbon monoxide and then someone hanged her from the ceiling fan. So it was a planed murder. At that moment I remembered the time when we used to tell each other that the day any one of us die, we will break into heaven, kidnap them and bring them back to earth. We used to say that no one in this world can ever dare to separate us. But now this happened. First Tanya disappeared mysteriously, and then Ritika was murdered. The police failed to find out that who did this and what was the reason behind this ruthless plan.
Another part of our lives was cut off. Deeksha, Sarah and I were left. There was no point living now. We tried of killing ourselves several times, but we survived every time. We felt grossed. We were making our lives more like hell. After several efforts, we gave up. We could not try anything more now. Every time we ended up in the beds of hospital. We felt how much not only our parents love us, but Ritika’s parents also cared for us a lot. We were like their own girls. And if we died, they would have no one else.
Almost a year later, we went for an excursion from the college to the thick forests in the outskirts of the town. We were supposed to stay very careful in case we find any wild animal searching for its prey. There, everyone had two days of fun, except three of us. We were not able to move on. We were always very upset. Our mates tried to make us happy but they always failed. The third and the last day when we woke up in the morning, I found that Deeksha was not there in the tent. I informed the authorities; they somehow managed to look for her. But… not alive. She had also left us. There her body lied in pieces as if some animal found her lustrous for its breakfast. Her body was tore badly. At that moment, I could not feel my body. I felt as if I was dead. I cried like hell.
How could the god do so injustice? He took away all my three best friends. I had one left with me. I was afraid, next it has to be me, or her. I wanted it to be me; I could not live like that without any of my best friends. Life meant nothing without them. I could not survive without anyone so close to me. I was much attached to them, and now I knew I had to live without them, be it for some more days, or forever. I knew me or Sarah could be chosen any moment. I was just praying god for it to be me, not Sarah. How could I even imagine living without her now? This was the moment when I needed my best friends the most, but now they were not here. Sarah herself was very much upset about the loss that we were facing. Both of us needed someone to console us.
Now, days went on like this, filled with tears. Whenever I closed my eyes, I used to see a flashback of the breath taking moments I had spent with them. And when I opened my eyes, there used to be tears. I had sleepless nights. I looked pale and weak. It seemed as though some kind of disease had struck me.
After Deeksha went away, Sarah had stopped speaking to me after some days. We were completely out of contact. I did not like this distance between us. But whenever I tried to make a conversation with her, she ignored and went away. I had started feeling that this is not my Sarah. She is someone else.
A few months later, when I felt that I cannot take up this pain alone, I decided to talk to Sarah. Something was wrong, and I didn’t know what. But whatever it was, I wanted to make it all fine. It had been months we spoke, and I was afraid that we might have a communication gap, and she might not listen to me. But then, I thought we have spent our childhood together with the same company, so there has to be some kind of misunderstanding or else no one had power depart us. But I was still afraid because after such a big loss, she seemed better way off than me. In fact she was not at all upset while I was living in sorrow.
I finally gathered up the courage and went to her place. She lived alone. Her parents used to live somewhere else. As usual her place was empty. As I rang the bell, the door opened itself. There was a dim yellow light all over her house. As I moved towards her room, I heard some voices, as if Sarah was speaking to someone. When I knocked on her door, she said “I was waiting for you, Shruti. Please do come in” I was confused for a while, how did she come to know that it was me when the door was shut? However I stepped in saying with a smile “Oh hi! Long time right? Anyways, how did you know it was me?” I was quite scared by the kind of light her house as filled with and thus I stammered a bit while saying this.
She was sitting on the bed with her back faced towards me. I moved on to have a look at her. When I looked at her, I was stunned to see that Sarah was not sitting there. It was my younger sister - Varuni sitting there giving a horrified look. Her head was down, and thick black hair almost covered the sides of the face. She was looking up only with her eyes. It scared the shit out of me. How could she be there when she had killed herself in a suicide? Nobody ever came to know why she did that. But how was it possible? She was dead. How could she return back? Then finally she spoke, “Hey sister. Long time right? Anyways, surprised to see your sister back? Or do you even remember me?” I decided to run away but my legs seemed to freeze. Varuni again spoke up, “Sister, you won’t be able to go away until I want you to go. This time, I rule here, not you.” I gathered up the courage and asked, “How come you are here? You were dead right?” Varuni said, “I came for revenge. You people wanted to know why I killed myself right? Well, now I am here to answer you. I killed myself because you were already killing me while I was alive. It was not possible for me to live while watching you fade away from my life. The day you met your best friends, I realized that I have no one in my life now. I never had good friends; you were the only one but those girls took even you away from me. They spoiled my life and finally I realized that you no more belonged to me. You belonged to them. I wanted to take revenge, from you for leaving me and from them for making you leave me. Killing you wouldn't affect your life much, but it surely would if I would've killed your friends. You would die like I did. So I snatched away all your friends from you. I had long back killed Sarah’s soul and replaced it with mine. Now as my task is over, I can go back to my world but here you will suffer a lot like I did.” I felt like killing myself. I was very upset. I never imagined that I was hurting my sister so much. I loved her a lot. If only she would have once told me to give her some time, I would surely have. But at that moment all I could do is ask for my friends back, so I begged, “Please Varuni, give me my friends back. I am very sorry for what I did. I cannot live without them.” She said, “The only thing I can do is take away more of your left friends. Nothing else. I don’t want to do anything either.” I was taken aback. I closed my eyes for a moment and remembered all those lovely moments that I had spent with my friends. Those little but wonderful things. Moments which were never going to come back. I realized I was alone in this world now. They were everything for me. When whole of the world stood against me, they were there with me. What would I do without them? Oh how much would I miss them! When I reopened my eyes, I found myself on the street. I was no more with Varuni at Sarah’s place. When I tried to get back in the house, it was locked.
I was now on the verge of suicide. I went onto the main road and got hit by a car which was moving in full speed. When I opened my eyes, I was on a hospital bed and was shocked to see Deeksha, Tanya, Sarah and Ritika standing around my bed. I was in intense pain but I was glad to see them. Slowly my pain faded away. I felt light as if nothing happened. All my sorrows that I was facing from all these days vanished. Then Deeksha said, “Why did you do so?” Tanya said, “We love you Shruti, and you tried to kill yourself?” Ritika said, “Please don’t do this. Don’t prove that you are a coward.” Sarah said, “We all have gone and only you are alive. You need to stay back in the world and tell them what were we and what have we faced.” All of them told me to stay back. They said, “We are always with you. No matter what. Just keep some courage. Don’t ever feel like a looser.” I promised to stay back if only they would be with me forever. There were no ifs and buts in it. They promised me to stay with me forever and always.
So I moved on to my life. It was kind of tough to live without my best friends, but I had to. I went through the entire thick and thin of my life without them, but at the same time with them. They were there in my ambiance. I could not see them but feel them, and that was the best part. They are there with me even today. I have a beautiful feeling that they are there. But those jerks just won’t come out. They are still my true friends and best friends.
Even today, I can feel them. They are still there with me. But life in not that fun. My life is not the same now. I miss them. I miss hanging out with them. I miss cracking jokes with them and at them. I miss sharing my problems with them. I miss how they used to turn every frown in a smile. I miss behaving at my wildest while with them, without thinking what would others think of me. It has been years I have behaved like who I really am. They were the only ones who knew who I really was. I really miss them. I miss them a lot.
