One Night on Richmond Road

“Goodbye to you my trusted friend 

We’ve known each other since we were nine or ten

Together we’ve climbed hills and trees 

Learned of love and ABC’s 

Skinned our hearts and skinned our knees 
............

We had joy we had fun we had seasons in the sun 

But the hills that we climbed were just seasons out of time…..”  

- Westlife
It was my brother’s Honda city and my first attempt at driving a sedan and the only time I am ever going to be caught doing that in this lifetime. Well, what can I tell you about that crazy night two years ago. I was three days old in Bangalore, she was few hours. In that way I was better off than Rahael, who was coming to India after I don’t know how many years. I was so happy seeing her in the Airport, she looked exactly the same when I left her years ago while we were still in school. In my heart, I desperately wanted to believe that. I dismissed that she now worked in the Bank of America in the US and lived in a beautiful home all by herself while I lived with my parents and was contemplating of shifting base to Bangalore and would then live with my elder brother and sister-in-law. I forego of the nagging thought that perhaps years had passed by us and we could have changed as individuals and if we would still be as great friends as we had been in class 10th. It’s always difficult to touch your past, you know. Tall, sophisticated, graceful, deep voiced that spoke sparingly, Rahael had become a beautiful woman now but when I hugged her, I knew some things never change. And for the good.

“Urmi, why can’t you come down to Pune? It’s just few hours from Bangalore. Take a Volvo girl. I will wait for you. Come and stay with me at my dad’s place. Mom and dad really want to see you and so do Danny and David (her brothers). Forget about others, I want to see you.” I still don’t know what was in my head when I told her vaguely that it wasn’t possible for me to make the trip. And I shudder to think what my rejection would have felt to an old friend who loved me like a sister! I was a fool. But then again, giving myself the benefit of doubt let me try and recollect why I didn’t want to take that trip to Pune. It was a difficult phase in my life, a period when I had to make a tough decision regarding my career. I was working with the United Nations Organisation in the social development sector as a humanitarian and seriously wanting to explore if this was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I was on a 15-day leave from office and had come to Bangalore to stay with my brother who encouraged me to explore the opportunities this city would give me. It was a crucial time, a make or a break situation. Fifteen days for a job hunt was insufficient but I still believed it would be enough to decide what I wanted to do in the near future. In this period of extreme dilemma, Raheal landed in India.

I tried telling her that but in the context of having been apart these many years, for some odd reason, my argument in my favor fell on deaf ears. Her dismissal of my excuse also made me feel like a bad person, and worse, a bad friend .If there is one thing I hated about being an army officer’s daughter, it was leaving behind my friends I valued or being left behind by them. Both ways I was a looser. So many people, so many memories and yet no one around me now, get the picture? Rahael was one such person I left behind years ago when father was posted out. After she landed in Pune after these many years we didn’t speak to each other, that was the kind of tension in between us. I carried on with my job hunt and spent my time visiting consultancies and going for interviews. In my spare time I carried on getting used to this new place.

She called me that following Friday, “How far is the airport from where you live?” I was still thinking about the purpose of that question when she informed me, “In few hours I will be there. And it will be like just how it used to be. You and me.” Time had certainly not dimmed the memories of our childhood.

“Rahael if your mom sees us driving this moped instead of studying and going for the math tuition, would she beat me too or she would beat just you?,” that was my concern back then. Driving a TVS moped which belonged to someone else at full speed, the thrill of filling gas and driving on the long straight road in the Army cantonment had felt like bliss then. I would make her sit behind me on these rides and she would make me sit next to her when she would driver her dad’s Omni. She was more sophisticated than me even back then and for some reason it bothers me till today. I still remember she had practiced Aye Mere Humsafar (a song from Qayamat se Qayamat Tak) for the school competition and had made me sit right in front of her in the audience so that she had a familiar face to park her shy eyes on!! That is the kind of craziness our friendship was about. 

So here we were, two different individuals grown into two separate directions perhaps a 360 degree turn facing each other, trying hard to accept this newness in the other, trying hard to find some traces of the old friend we had lost years ago and most of all trying to fit all this in the present!

I decided I could learn to like this new friend of mine. For old time’s sake.

It was like I switched over to someone totally different from the girl I was from the second Raheal landed in Bangalore. I had my own home here but I agreed instantly without a second thought when she suggested we move to a good hotel on Richmond Road and spend a week together. I asked her if she had been in the city before because I was mighty impressed with the knowledge she seemed to have. She told me casually, “Urmi, I don’t have to have been here before to know that! There’s google!” Oh, so I thought, people in the US ‘googled’ pretty hard. We found the hotel and with the kind of information she seemed to have, I wasn’t surprised. I called my brother and told him about my plans for the next few days. If ‘bhaiyah’ was a bit taken aback, he did a mighty good job of concealing it. We checked in and spent a good amount of time catching up with the times we had lost out on.

Scene two has us in my own house while I am trying frantically to talk my brother into giving me his car, Ford Fiesta, to us for the next few days so that we could ‘drive around’. This is the best part when I think about the most foolish thing I have ever done in my life asking a young guy for hiss brand new car which has never been allowed to see a film of dust on its polished surface! I didn’t have a licence, I was just three days old in the city, the only landmark I knew was the Nilgiri’s supermarket in my own neighbourhood, the rising crime in the city- I heard all this but that night I wasn’t taking a ‘no’ for an answer!. Raheal did that to me. Finally we managed to get the keys of my cousin brother’s car, a Honda City, which used to be with us those days.

It was a situation for me. Too much was happening too fast and all to my discomfort. I was to drive this beast and to be very frank I have never been great at driving. The rear view mirror kept falling off so every few meters I would get down and fix it. Even the simple task of listening to 94.3 radio 1 took a lot of effort in some one else’s car! All this was met with Rahael’s cynical glance. We hit Commercial Street, the one place I just love in Bangalore for the kind of shopping I am into. Hours went by effortlessly but as the day progressed my mind began wandering to my future plans and my career concerns and I found myself unable to have fun. Raheal and I went to every possible place our limited knowledge permitted but by 10 pm she also seemed eager to get back to the hotel. I had also reached the rock bottom of my patience. I found myself making efforts to have fun for her sake but not actually enjoying. 

I watched her drive round and round around Garuda mall for next one hour. I tried telling her about my hunch as to where Richmond Street was but got no reaction from her. I suggested we take directions from passers-by at the end of two hours but she cut me short with her words, “Urmi, I drive in Boston and Las Vegas, what’s Bangalore!!!! When I drive, we don’t ask directions, we just reach!!!!” I looked at her in dismay all the while thinking, “Kitni buddhu hai yeh American ladki!!”. I allowed her some time to get more lost than we actually were but when we reached a deserted street and my watch showed the time as 12 am, I knew sometimes you just got to save your loved ones before they take you and drown!! I shouted “HALT!!!!” in the sharpest voice I could manage to startle her and make her stop the car. I got down and found us amidst a layout in some god forsaken eerie looking place. Today I am told we were 20km from our hotel on Richmond road. She was still saying something to me, that which I chose to not hear as I walked on the street. I saw two guys coming out of a building after partying and fumbling with their keys to get their bikes started. I thought I would ask their help but I wasn’t prepared for their reaction when I called out from behind them “Hi!!! Can you please help us, we are lost!!”. They both fled a short distance from where I stood till I put on my mobile phone torch light. I smiled a bit even that night. It was a crazy moment alright.

I told them what had happened. Both of them seemed like guys from good families. One of them told me to stay put in my car while they go and find our hotel and then they would come back to get us and drop us till there. In the car, Raheal directioned all her I-hate-you glances towards me. By then I felt responsible for what happened to us that night.

These guys came back within half an hour and we were ushered to our hotel rooms at 1 am. Once safely inside I just remembered I had not said a word to our knights in shining armour. I went down to the lobby, thanked them and found out their names- Reuben and Bikram. They are my friends till today.

I was really cross that night. I was cross at myself for trying to do something that wasn’t coming from my heart, for allowing some one to take all decisions which also could impact my own safety and lastly, I was cross because I had to see such a day with my best friend Raheal. I thought we could put all this behind us and just go home and live there with my brother for the remaining days but Raheal had another plan for us. As late as 2 am she told me, “Urmi, let’s go to first Cochin then we will go to Goa and Mumbai. Lets take the car and we will take a tour guide along with us on our 7day trip.” By then I was clear what I had to do. I told her in the best manner possible that I could not accompany her to any trip for the one reason that I was here in Bangalore for something very important.

That was two years ago. She left without a backward glance. She left with several unspoken words. We never actually forgave each other-Rahael and me, perhaps because we never really understood the different situation both of us had been back then. We never talked all this time. We just carried the hurt within us.

After 2 years I am now looking out for a new job. And guess what, Raheal is coming to India again!! It’s funny how in my life there have been only three times I have actually hunted for a job(the rest of the times lady luck pulled me into an organization) and all these three times were also when Rahael got leave and planned a trip to India!! I sometimes wonder if there is some concocted relation or some meaning in this. But one thing is for certain, we are not meeting each other this time. I heard she is going to be in Hyderabad for three days.

Rahael Hyam, class 10th, roll number 16, Kendriya Vidhylaya Narangi Guwahati. Urmila Chanam, class 10th, roll number 17, Kendriya Vidhylaya Narangi Guwahati. It was 15th April, my birthday and also a bandh called by the militant group most famous in Assam. Not a soul dared to move that day so vehicles were completely off the road. We had our final exams going on .Next day we had Math. I was quietly studying at my desk and inspite of mothers’ assurance that we would celebrate my birthday the next day, I was still a bit down. At 10 am I heard a car honk at our door. I ran outside to open the door and found Raheal come in her father’s army staff car, a black ambassador, with a chauffeur. She opened the back door of the car, took out her guitar and strummed on it to play, “Happy Birthday to you, happy birthdays to you, happy birthday to Urmila, happy birthday to you.”

I picked up my phone and dialed Jet Airways, “Good evening, when is the next flight to Hyderabad?”

Somethings never change. And for the good.

The writer works in an IT Consultancy in Bangalore as a HR Manager and she can be reached at urmila.chanam@gmail.com

11-Dec-2011 / 01:30 AM / Urmila Chanam / 4 Comments