Skip to main content

Joe the tenacious friend

AI-generated illustration


You outgrow certain friendships because life changes you in ways that nobody, including you, had expected. Joe is one such friend of mine who was very dear to me once. That friendship cannot be sustained anymore because I am no more the person whom Joe knew and loved to amble along with. And Joe seems incapable of understanding the fact that people can change substantially.

Joe and I were supposed to meet one of these days after a gap of more than two decades. I scuttled the meeting rather heartlessly. Just because Joe’s last messages carried words that smacked of intimacy. My life has gone through so much devastating fire that the delicate warmth of intimacy has become repulsive.

Joe was a good friend of mine while we were in Shillong. He was a post-graduate student and a part-time schoolteacher when I met him first. I was a fulltime schoolteacher teaching math and science to ninth and tenth graders. My dream was to postgraduate in English literature and teach literature to undergraduates. I had a passion for literature. My free time was spent with books of good literature which I borrowed from the State Central Library, Shillong.

I joined Kerala University’s Institute of Correspondence Courses for their postgraduate course in literature. It was same as the regular course with the only difference that the students had to do all the studies by themselves with the help of the study materials sent recurrently by post from the Institute. The assignments were sent by post too. At the end of each year, the students of the correspondence course appeared for the exams along with the regular students. The same exam, same assessment criteria, same processes.

I did well in the exams earning a place in a special souvenir brought out by the Institute of Correspondence Courses on the occasion of their bi-decennial anniversary. My achievement owed much to Joe who brought me a lot of superb books from the North-Eastern Hill University’s library. He was a member of the library by virtue of being a lecturer in an affiliated college. As soon as he completed postgraduation, he secured the lecturer’s job. He took the trouble to get me hundreds of books during the two years of my postgraduate studies.

Joe went out of his way to help me get a lecturer’s job in his own college too, a premier institution of higher studies in Shillong. Joe was the best of friends that one could get.

I was so happy to have got my dream job that I celebrated it too much. In fact, it was not a celebration. It was a bitter struggle with my own inferiority complexes and insecurity feelings which I had masqueraded as displays of superiority in many of my limited social interactions. There was also a struggle with my own inner emptiness.

I remember what another friend, whom I shall call Uriel in this A2Z series, told me once. “There are some people who go around wearing masks which are designed with great care. The masks deceive ordinary people. Others who see through the masks are usually silent about them. Or they may have fun behind the mask-wearer’s back. At any rate, the wearer has to confront his real self one day. The masks will come down one by one. And then the wearer will have to stand in front of the mirror fully naked and confront the horrifying reality in the mirror.”

The words are quoted from memory. They may not be Uriel’s exact words. But if I remember them so vividly, it means that I knew somewhere in the depth of my consciousness that I was the mask-wearer in Uriel’s counsel. Joe knew it too, I’m sure. But his approach was different. His approach became a big game in the end. He was not the originator of the game. One Reverend Machiavelli designed the game and got people like Joe to execute it. It was a well-played game. Its intentions were noble, I would like to believe. They were all trying to help me shed my masks.

Some masks refuse to come down. I became an alcoholic in the entire process that seemed to have gone out of the strategist’s control. Even Joe stopped talking to me. When he did talk because I confronted him occasionally, the conversation made no sense to me. I had become a shadow in a horror movie being directed by an invisible joker.

Eventually I left Shillong. I was forced to. I was 41 when I chucked a job that many would have died for. Maggie stifled a sob when I told her that we had to leave Shillong. Towards a dark future. Maggie’s brother who worked in Delhi in those days extended his magnanimous help. “Anyone can find a job in Delhi,” he reassured us. He was right too.

I started this A2Z series with Delhi. Once I settled down comfortably in Delhi, I visited Shillong to complete some formalities at the college which I had quit unceremoniously. The principal expedited the processes and my job was done faster than I had imagined. I had time to spend with Joe. But Joe was not interested. He avoided me.

I avoided him forever after that. Now, 22 years later, no word of intimacy can ever bring back the affection that was lost somewhere in the process of my belated and long-overdue self-discovery and self-healing. Because it is not intimacy that I look for now. It is the kind of integrity that psychologist Erik Erikson speaks about in his theory of human development stages. I want wisdom to arise from the griefs and bitterness of the past. I want to touch the light that shines – that I am able to see – beyond words, beyond relationships, beyond time.   


PS. I'm participating in #BlogchatterA2Z 

Previous PostsA,  B,  C,  D,  E,  F,  G,  H, I

Comments

  1. I find myself to be an onlooker to the happenings on the stages of the theaters amidst the incessant rains and numbing colds, outside.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You were there in those days partly as an amused onlooker and partly as a reliable friend.

      Delete
  2. Lost friendships...in hindsight are just all of us in different stages of our development. Knowing that is a form of closure i guess.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Reverend Machiaveli, the strategist - Is he just a shadow or a fragment of your imagination? Till date, this claim seems to be unfounded since I read your autobiography Autumn Shadows.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. As in most posts of this series, Machiavelli name is imaginary. But there was a person or a group that organised certain reform strategies... Wait for M. After I wrote Autumn Shadows, I got more information on this.

      Delete
  4. I could feel the pressure beyond doubt; the storm raging within your mind. I extend my wishes to you.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you. I'm at peace with myself now though I won't be able to accept certain persons easily anymore.

      Delete
  5. Sounds like it was a rough time for you.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Those few years were hell. Now maybe i can go straight to Paradise. 😊

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Country where humour died

Humour died a thousand deaths in India after May 2014. The reason – let me put it as someone put it on X.  The stand-up comedian Kunal Kamra called a politician some names like ‘traitor’ which made his audience laugh because they misunderstood it as a joke. Kunal Kamra has to explain the joke now in a court of justice. I hope his judge won’t be caught with crores of rupees of black money in his store room . India itself is the biggest joke now. Our courts of justice are huge jokes. Our universities are. Our temples, our textbooks, even our markets. Let alone our Parliament. I’m studying the Ramayana these days in detail because I’ve joined an A-to-Z blog challenge and my theme is Ramayana, as I wrote already in an earlier post . In order to understand the culture behind Ramayana, I even took the trouble to brush up my little knowledge of Sanskrit by attending a brief course. For proof, here’s part of a lesson in my handwriting.  The last day taught me some subhashit...

Lucifer and some reflections

Let me start with a disclaimer: this is not a review of the Malayalam movie, Lucifer . These are some thoughts that came to my mind as I watched the movie today. However, just to give an idea about the movie: it’s a good entertainer with an engaging plot, Bollywood style settings, superman type violence in which the hero decimates the villains with pomp and show, and a spicy dance that is neatly tucked into the terribly orgasmic climax of the plot. The theme is highly relevant and that is what engaged me more. The role of certain mafia gangs in political governance is a theme that deserves to be examined in a good movie. In the movie, the mafia-politician nexus is busted and, like in our great myths, virtue triumphs over vice. Such a triumph is an artistic requirement. Real life, however, follows the principle of entropy: chaos flourishes with vengeance. Lucifer is the real winner in real life. The title of the movie as well as a final dialogue from the eponymous hero sugg...

Abdullah’s Religion

O Abdulla Renowned Malayalam movie actor Mohanlal recently offered special prayers for Mammootty, another equally renowned actor of Kerala. The ritual was performed at Sabarimala temple, one of the supreme Hindu pilgrimage centres in Kerala. No one in Kerala found anything wrong in Mohanlal, a Hindu, praying for Mammootty, a Muslim, to a Hindu deity. Malayalis were concerned about Mammootty’s wellbeing and were relieved to know that the actor wasn’t suffering from anything as serious as it appeared. Except O Abdulla. Who is this Abdulla? I had never heard of him until he created an unsavoury controversy about a Hindu praying for a Muslim. This man’s Facebook profile describes him as: “Former Professor Islahiaya, Media Critic, Ex-Interpreter of Indian Ambassador, Founder Member MADHYAMAM.” He has 108K followers on FB. As I was reading Malayalam weekly this morning, I came to know that this Abdulla is a former member of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind Kerala , a fundamentalist organisation. ...

Violence and Leaders

The latest issue of India Today magazine studies what it calls India’s Gross Domestic Behaviour (GDB). India is all poised to be an economic superpower. But what about its civic sense? Very poor, that’s what the study has found. Can GDP numbers and infrastructure projects alone determine a country’s development? Obviously, no. Will India be a really ‘developed’ country by 2030 although it may be $7-trillion economy by then? Again, no is the answer. India’s civic behaviour leaves a lot, lot to be desired. Ironically, the brand ambassador state of the country, Uttar Pradesh, is the worst on most parameters: civic behaviour, public safety, gender attitudes, and discrimination of various types. And UP is governed by a monk!  India Today Is there any correlation between the behaviour of a people and the values and principles displayed by their leaders? This is the question that arose in my mind as I read the India Today story. I put the question to ChatGPT. “Yes,” pat came the ...

The Ramayana Chronicles: 26 Stories, Endless Wisdom

I’m participating in the A2Z challenge of Blogchatter this year too. I have been regular with this every April for the last few years. It’s been sheer fun for me as well as a tremendous learning experience. I wrote mostly on books and literature in the past. This year, I wish to dwell on India’s great epic Ramayana for various reasons the prominent of which is the new palatial residence in Ayodhya that our Prime Minister has benignly constructed for a supposedly homeless god. “Our Ram Lalla will no longer reside in a tent,” intoned Modi with his characteristic histrionics. This new residence for Lord Rama has become the largest pilgrimage centre in India, drawing about 100,000 devotees every day. Not even the Taj Mahal, a world wonder, gets so many footfalls. Ayodhya is not what it ever was. Earlier it was a humble temple town that belonged to all. Several temples belonging to different castes made all devotees feel at home. There was a sense of belonging, and a sense of simplici...