Opinion Remembering my friend, Nadeem

What followed is a fairy tale of friendship, love and care. Within months, this tall, thin boy became an all-pervading force in my life. He pushed me to speak the little English I knew, and exposed me to the world of beautifully-worded greeting cards. We played the game of “name-place-animal-thing” in the warm afternoons and shifted outside with our badminton racquets in the cool evenings. Our nights were spent writing letters that were largely exchanged inside some book that his sister carried between the two homes. In those hundreds of letters, I emerged as a reader-writer in English, documenting my days in school and, later, college. He became a teacher, a soulmate and a companion in all my experiences of life.

He was a devout Muslim and belonged to a family of government teachers. Although there were moments of anxiousness for both sets of parents, they could never bring themselves to separate us. He continued to play with me, to etch our initials — “NY” — on all racquets and “ReYNold” pens, to wait for a glimpse of me near my school every day after his afternoon namaz and to blow prayers on my forehead for every important milestone I crossed. He corrected my writing, gave me lessons and, in turn, got his difficult science and mathematics answers corrected in my high school hands. He would travel many kilometres on the same day to get a quick glimpse of me. He preserved my school paintings for a decade and saw to it that I ate well at every Eid lunch that his family shared with us. He was the one to collect all my major results from school and college, celebrating them far more than I knew we could. He converted his early morning cycle rides to the diploma college into a walk with me to school, and made sure I reached on time for the farewell parties during my MA in English in the University of Mysore. He narrated hour-long stories about the moonlit nights of the Chikkamagaluru hills during his engineering days, and returned from the Gulf with a diamond pendant and a far richer joy in his heart. He steered me through the most difficult times I had after getting my MA degree. Over a decade sailed by, and we grew older together.

Here I am now, and it’s been more than a decade since I saw him last. He disappeared from my life as mysteriously as he had entered. But not a month goes by without reminding me of the companion who taught me the foremost lessons of love and companionship. Hundreds of his greeting cards have remained in my closet of tangible memory. He has not been around for a while now, but tonight, he is in my mind more than ever. As I listen to the news, watch TV and see saffron- and black-clad students raising slogans about gods, religion, dress codes and justice, he is in my heart. I met him in the late 1990s, and over 20 years later, here I sit, watching as any possibility of a similar warmth in the present grows dim. My heart sinks at the sight of a group of sloganeering boys chasing a girl who raises a counter-slogan. My heart sinks further thinking of the world we are making for my daughter.

He had insisted more than a dozen times that I pen down our story. He was certain that it would fill at least a thousand pages. Here I am, at midnight, penning it in the briefest space possible, and searching for the eyes that would have read it with equal familiarity.

I lay my head down, brooding if my child will meet this or another Nadeem in her lifetime.

This column first appeared in the print edition on February 11, 2022 under the title ‘My friend, Nadeem’. The writer is assistant professor, Government First Grade College, University of Mysore