Indian Ameri

“Gone were the days of togetherness, when we were just roomies. Here are the days of departure when we are more than just friends” – What happened on the 11th of December 2007, is definitely going to change the way, not I, but 3 friends realize would change the face of our lives in the coming future.


Tired astronauting Tranquility, I opened my apt door, waiting to lie on my floor bed and start typing the finalized version of my paper. Instead I see, two roomies sitting far apart from each other, one sipping tea and the other having his hand on his forehead – unlikely of his funny side. Instead of me, right away start cleaning the mess my dexterous nephew hurricaned, I sat on my bed waiting for either of them to start discussing. The first few sentences indicated how clueless they were and instead of ‘thinking’ over the issues, I started ‘sinking’ with their worries.

The few happy faces we had met in a month, made us ‘soustand’ how pathetic we are living our lives (that’s how it all started). A series of random cribbing from an extremely confused dual degree candidate on the way his courses are taking control of his life at this age, from the pillar of support about his job search and signs of his personal failures he had over the recent few months and of course, my silence speaking volumes about my current life all made the yellow bulb of our room seem dimmer the moment. Slowly drifting to other pathetic people who are complete losers (at least that’s what they think), who never understand what real happiness they have beside them, we asked ourselves the question of ‘Why don’t we just admit our defeats and return to India?’ Thanks to the ‘we stand on the knife edge not giving in or out of our troubles’ proverb from shorty, we slowly recovered from our misery.

Slowly the guys made me at least drip out instead of pouring, the real reasons behind my thanksgiving journey to Columbus, me explaining the reason of ‘why I avoid certain group of people’ for which my roomies gave awesome reasons which only an ESP reader can have guessed. The moments when every now and then I kissed my outdated laptop after cursing its existence in my life, explaining the way I think Tranquility as fun instead of cursing my decision to moonwalk it, the faces of ‘sorry’ they kept, the jokes I shared from Tranquility which made them ‘soustand’ that I’m a much different person than I used to be even months ago, all made the rhythm scale rise from 0 to 5.

With me, getting happier the moment, happier the day after the resolutions I took control of, the one question on my strange behavior of avoidance/nonchalance with particular common friends made me go for a full stop. Instead of just avoiding the need for me to answer them, or to complain about others opinion on my character, I just admitted the fact that ‘I get choked when I see friends getting choked coz of my presence. I’m just analyzing and rebuilding my character so that I never get choked again.’

Thanks to the sudden crib started by the funny lad, I wasn’t choked anymore for the moment. Eventually, we ended up discussing about running back to India, start our very own business, share duties in the job and make big names into the future. With an hour and a half wasted, with every precious minute looming out to be ‘C’ or even ‘F’ grades for my roomies and a ‘deadline not reached’ for my paper, we slowly started to sit in silence waiting for the discussion to end. But as always, the funny roomie, asked me to hook him up with a chic I’ve networked. A laughter followed by departure to our respective laptops and books was what we did.

But today was different; all 3 of us didn’t wanna give up this moment we shared and with all the mature crib we shared, we decided to bask in the memory we created moments ago. I started looking at my paper, the deadline I promised voluntarily to my advisor, and the option of continuing the talk in hand and ‘Fuck this’ was what I told to myself and I asked my roomies of the option of going to Denny’s and eventually after several thoughts and more ‘Fuck the exam’ we decided to go for it.

What happened today in Denny’s, is the core change we all have been waiting for. All 3 of us thinking of the plan of spending New Year by camping in some dense forest, not worrying about the real moment the year starts, no phone calls, not even thinking that a year arrived, made us all go silent towards the car. Inside, there started the rap from shorty, when I and funny buddy just retrospecting in sleep.

Denny’s we reached after nearly a month – a place where we 3 just crib cherishing our food. But today was much different. The real maturity in us started with the reason behind the rap shorty does – to throw out anger and stress in rap words and eventually putting forth the question ‘Why do we use filthy language when we are angry?’ A eventual hypothesis from me, a proof of truth from shorty and finally funny exclaiming, ‘I really love your CRAP’ indicating the way I gut the words ‘Crap’ ‘Shit’ ‘Fuck this’, etc. Then don’t know how we ended up talking about the facial expressions funny does to show empathy and sincere listening. A boisterous laughter on the facial expressions eventually made Brooke come for the order. Poor Brooke, shorty literally raped her with his anguish filled questions on what does a miniburger contain?

Coming back to foul language, we ended up talking about our teenage days and puberty and all about the stuff we did in order to understand sex. Though it looks very pervert for even discussing about stuff related to sex, all 3 of us were happy on the fact that we’ve became bonded close enough to talk about the strangest things we did in our past. Seriously we spoke about sex and puberty for an hour and a half. The wide branch of things we spoke today, showed how much we have encountered, to stand up strong in this filthy world. All 3 of us were feeling like Kings who solely fought the world of rotten minds.

The other great thing we realized was, though shorty and funny were friends for ‘exactly’ 7 and ‘approximately’ 6 years, it was only with I, that funny likes listening to stories I shared to him with the word ‘mom’ playing the main role. A year back, he flinched or avoided any discussion related to the word mom since he was motherless. It made me happy that now I have yet another great friend who likes being with me and wanting to comfort him.

It was 3 in the morning and the milkshake was licked to moisture, the ticket was at the center of the table, but we decided to spend more time drinking just water. Mature enough to quit on anymore sex talk, we slowly drifted into question mode. ‘Why do women in general don’t take things as a joke?’ ‘Will I ever get a job I’ll like?’ ‘How did we lose track of our other roomies?’ ‘Why are we spending so much money on food everynight?’ ‘Why are we not even cooking food in the new house?’ and eventually the question we never wanted to put today – ‘Will we still be in touch with each other once we leave?’ all made us instead of answering, just silenced our way out of cribbing. This time the silence was shattered by funnys question ‘Will I ever fall in love or will any girl like me, not like that like, but like love like?’ Instead of we all laughing on his way of putting statements, for the first time, we all remained calm and in thought. With he mulling over his question, I and shorty were sighing on the question ‘Why did we fall in love?’ The pile up of emotion made shorty to put the final question – ‘Which is harder? Not experiencing something that you always knew existed or Experiencing what existed, but trying to find an answer for why it existed?’ Those 2 long minutes of silence among 3 recently very close mid 20 aged friends definitely proved the true maturity in us guys. We shared thoughts, gave privacy to each ones emotion and still cared about the others opinion and questions.

With Brooke watching our empty water glasses, I broke the silence, ‘Any backup plans like Friends?’ ‘I wanna be hooked up with some girl before my masters?’ – funny insisted. After a short conversation about my network of friends, the under grads who hit me, incidents of opportunities we maturely avoided and much more, we decided to leave. The long drive to Youngs library for a print out, I and shorty waiting in the car, listening to Tose Naina Lagey from Anwar and watching lots of girls walking out of the library packed with last min exam preps with photographic eyes and still sitting silently cherishing the silence spoke volumes of the bonding we had developed in the few days we went out in search of answers which we never intended to find in the first place.

A short nap and back to Tranquility, a mail of finely asking for an extension on the voluntary deadline, and a nap to rejuvenate for more happy moments of silence, was all I did after the new Denny’s we visited. As I wrote this blog, shorty entertained me with food, and funny to avoid the fact that he did a pathetic work on his exam, just played with his birthday radio controlled toys and made me laugh. 11th December 07, has occupied the list of unforgettable days in my life and truly, madly and deeply would stand out to be one of those days that changed the way I saw life and succeeded.

“Gone were the days of togetherness, when we were just roomies. Here are the days of departure when we are more than just friends”