"Ask! Ask if you don't know. Inquire, if you want to know. Ask Zangpo why I drink so much. Zangpo knows all. He sees what I see. He does what I do. He cares for me like nobody else."
Once upon a time, flowers bloomed. But the fruits fell before anyone could pick them. No one could eat. Hope and desperation hung in the empty spaces. Everyone was left alone.
Alone. That is how I was then, and how I am now. I need to survive. But how will I survive when I have given part of my heart and my life away? It takes a long time to mend a life that was once so full. My broken heart sinks and cuts like a knife. Why did you do such things? Our friendship was pretentious all along. "Rich friends have rich hearts of love"—that sounds foolish to me now. I see clearly now that you only showed me the duplicity of friendship.
"Birds of the same feather flock together." I read that in seventh standard. So it was with Pasang (name changed) and me. We became fast friends in a distant school in the capital. Similarities attract each other. We were both silent. We were both away from home for the first time. We had innocent parents who trusted us.
As the days moved, I observed that Pasang was too conservative, hardworking, divinely religious, and self-praising. He did not drink any kind of liquor and had the best habit of always volunteering to be class captain or something similar. In this sense, I was quite different. I was always a silent observer. Sometimes I sneaked out of class and drank alone in melancholy moods.
As days and months passed, other classmates regarded us as close friends. So the chance of making other friends became less. You can't befriend everyone in school. If you do, you have no true friends. That happens in school life. You cannot befriend time itself.
The seeds of our friendship were planted spontaneously. Our surroundings said so. We shared food. We studied together—sometimes at my house, occasionally at his. I believed we had become true friends. He was our volunteered captain. We were in a different class then. Many of his classmates cursed him for being so authoritarian, and they refused to have him as captain the next month. I guessed he lost that future chance.
Life rolled on. Youth is the age of rupture. Everything ruptured in no time.
After two years, we were again together at NIE, Samtse, as training mates. He was different then. I had always considered him a friend—anywhere, everywhere, whatever I did. But he was quite different. He ignored me simply. I didn't mind much at first. As the days passed, he began to win respect from elders and lecturers by polishing their shoes and volunteering for them. He volunteered to be a house counselor in the first year. The story was the same: many classmates hated him for being authoritative and using his power wickedly. I always thought he was a bad leader and a bad counselor.
Our friendship became so thin that whenever we met, he talked little or ignored me. Like flower petals falling one by one, our bonds broke one by one. Still, I thought he would help me when I needed him. The truth was, I was under him in his house captainship, and he made me do SUPW work right in front of his eyes. I didn't mind it so much.
Then came the beginning of the death of our friendship. I remember it vividly. I took this incident very seriously—what he did to me that day. Without any reason, he turned against me completely.
It happened on the NIE football field. He was one of the judges of the football match—such a sycophantic person. He threatened to make me the ball retriever. If I refused, he would report me to his other sycophant lecturer, and that would create enough problems to make me lose marks. The ball retriever's job was to get the ball when it went outside. Taking part in games and sports as a ball catcher meant marks to pass our course.
Half the match was over. Resting time. I was about to sit on the empty chair near him. And what he said next I will never forget—and never forgive: "Go, don't sit here, ball boy. Go there." He pointed to the sewage drain. It wasn't even his chair. Ball boys sometimes sat there. I remained silent and sat on the muddy-smelling tank. It wouldn't have been so shameful if not for the crowd of girls who had heard him and were looking at me with pity—or worse, disgust. I had never had a single girl in my life. My face would burn if I ever talked to one. The match started again. I went to talk to him, but he was damned.
The match ended. The players came for refreshments. They brought out fruity juice. The juice distributor was about to give me a bottle, but Pasang came and snatched it away. Then he turned his back and announced to all the players and judges to drink every single bottle. I tried to say something in a comical way to lighten the matter, but he was damned. At that moment, I couldn't resist. I was about to hit my best friend. But I controlled myself.
I was deeply ashamed. What wrong had I done to my true friend? I couldn't understand. Behind the curtain, I knew something was in his mind—something that made him hate me so much. I asked myself: real friends don't exploit or ridicule each other in front of others.
Now I know: some people are like dry leaves. They fall without any use to their own tree. They move here and there for a while, then get blown away, unseen from the mother tree. So are many of our friends.
That was the last thing I ever wanted to see or hear from him.
Five years later, I wished for the dearest death. That devil-minded friend lost his wife. He had loved her so deeply. She ran into the jungle and hanged herself.
A few months later, I received a devastating letter. I did not look at it with surprise.
"Why did no one tell me? It has become clear now that you, my best friend, kept me going all these years. I lost my wife because I was mindless. I treated her like I treated you, Zangpo. Now I drink my life away."
There was little satisfaction in my mind that he still remembered those bad days. I replied to him: "In life, we remember only bad things. Let's try to forget those bad happenings and remember the good things instead."
I hoped this small, universal lesson would help him.
But deep down, I knew—some friendships are not meant to be nurtured. Not with selfish people. Not with those who drain you, shame you, and only remember you when their world falls apart.
Note: The above article is a somewhat true story of the author's life, though some details have been truncated for the brevity of the story.
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