“Blessed is He in Whose hand is the kingdom, and He Who has power over all things, Who created death and life that He may try you.”
‘Death’ was a subject which I had in a way always forbidden myself from thinking about. It’s not like I had not witnessed someone dear passing away but just that I chose to keep away from it. As if it were a forbidden territory that I mustn’t even think about. And every time a terrible thought of losing someone I love crossed my mind I would try and push it away with such dexterity I am amazed at.
I was not until the night of February 11, 2009 that I had thought so much about this ‘issue’. I still cannot fathom the reality that someone I have known so closely, someone who I had loved so much and some one with whom I had shared my dreams and thoughts had just gone away…just passed away. Someone who was my age, in fact a few months younger than me had died!
This post is a tribute to Navita. My friend with whom I have grown up, with whom I have spent hours over the telephone, with whom I have shared my thoughts, dreams and feelings.
Navita and I were together in school since class 1, but it was only in Class 3 that we got very friendly. And then there was no looking back! We sat together in class, initially we started addressing each other as ‘partner’ and then from sitting together in class we moved onto sharing lunch and finally secrets. Navita was always much more matured than I was. She had this air of sensibility about her, she knew right from wrong and even though I was seven months older than her I used to feel very secure when she was around…as if I had someone to protect me. She was a tom boy, she liked paying cricket with her colony boys, she collected marbles and loved watching the film ‘Rocky’.
Boarding the school bus after school was always an ordeal, especially when there were more kids trying to push their way into one bus because the second bus was either late or not coming at all.
I remember once when I was just 10 I was trying to push my way into a packed bus that Navita had already boarded, she stretched her hand from inside so I could take it and suddenly the agitated bus conductor pushed me out of the bus. My eyes swelled with tears and Navita got off the bus. She bought me an orange bar and we both set out for the police station to get a FIR lodged about that badly behaved conductor. Obviously nobody in the police took us seriously and wrote nothing but till date when I think of that day, it gives me immense pride in having a friend who cared so much!
It was the same year we were caught cheating in a mental maths test in class. My class-teacher who was extremely cross called us individually and told us that she’ll fail us in the test. I remember she went first and came back smiling, I was waiting outside the classroom again teary and pale. She winked at me and gave me that reassuring smile of hers and it was amazing how quickly my tears vanished and I went in and apologized for the mistake and came back happy.
Navita pampered me like a younger sibling. Every time we would meet she would buy me a chocolate from the school canteen. She loved to see me finish the chocolate, what she loved the most was when I licked every bit of the chocolate off the wrapper…she would fondly call me Laalchi.
We had our own code language and whenever we were in the library where we were forbidden from speaking aloud we would exchange written notes and it was crazy because everything we wrote to each other always seemed so funny that it became difficult to not laugh out loud. On one such day I was down with a terrible cold, Navita wrote something funny on her notebook and showed it to me, I found it so funny that I laughed so hard that there was snot all over my face and to make matters worse, I did not have a handkerchief. It was hilarious, I had to roll up my sweater sleeve and wipe it off. I still remember the next day when she was standing next to me during assembly how she ensured I had changed my sweater. And after this incident till many years later, whenever I was low she would look at me and draw imaginary snot with her finger in a zigzag action over her face.
Navita had this wonderful quality of making me feel happy whenever I was low. She did not ever lecture or council; she just cracked a joke or reminded me of something really funny that was sure to make me laugh.
As time passed we distanced, our class sections changed, she made new friends and we did not spend as much time as we used to. But we knew we were there for each other. School was over and I moved to a different school for class XI and XII. But as luck had it we were back for graduation in the same college. Things had changed now, our subjects were different, our friends were different but we caught up every now and then only to realize that we were still the best of friends like we were back in school.
In 2004, after graduation I moved to Delhi and she to Bangalore, we got involved in our own lives, but we called each other on our birthdays. The last time I spoke to her was on her birthday October 12, 2008 when she had turned 25. We spoke for a long time, after a very long time. I told her about my life, we fondly remembered school days, talked about family, common friends their whereabouts and such like. Then I asked her about marriage and she said “I don’t see myself getting married for the next five years…there’s so much more to do.” Little did we know that she won’t even live to wish me on my birthday which was just five months away.
Navita died in a road accident on February 11, 2009 in Bangalore. She was cremated in Chandigarh on February 12 where I saw her after five years, lying stiff, cold and lifeless. She looked grown-up, her hair had grown long but her face was the same…calm and comforting. I regretted not having told her how much I missed the good old school days, I regretted not having told her how much I loved her, I regretted not having called her out-of-turn, when it wasn’t her birthday, and told her that even though I didn’t call her everyday, as I did when we were in school, I often thought about her.
And everything came back to me so vividly, every prank we played together, every moment we spent together, the way she laughed, her hand-writing – the stiff, erect, alphabets neatly placed together, her favourite song, film, colour, her love for animals…it was all reeling in my head like a film I had grown up watching.
Though Navita is not around any longer her memories will always stay with me. She was like God’s angel sent here to give happiness to whoever she met and I think I am so lucky I got to be a part of God’s blessing for as long as she was here.
“You make the night to pass into the day and You make the day to pass into the night, and You bring forth the living from the dead and You give sustenance to whom You please without measure.”
