I don’t clearly remember but I was supposedly about three when I first befriended you. Sometimes I would play with you and sometimes you would quietly lay down teaching me. Many times I tore your heart apart into bits and pieces and blew you into the air with a gush of wind. Now I know even you must have wept but on those days I felt that you enjoyed your flight.
With years passing by, I grew taller and fatter and fatter. Sometimes I would take you to be a burden when I had to carry you on my delicate shoulders. As time elapsed further and I made more friends I felt like ignoring you. I avoided you so many times but my true friend always stuck to me. After those initial years of naivety, I attained enlightenment that you probably were my best friend, and life without you might be a living hell. So I returned back to you professing abject repentance and you welcomed me back with open arms.
It was then a union for years where you always supported me in all the ways you could without the fear of being left out if ever I moved on. Either you were prepared for that day perhaps or you already knew that our separation wouldn’t last long. But today I feel ashamed to recall that I became so self-absorbed in myself that I just didn’t care to find time to even caress you for some moments. You were just proudly displayed by me as an accessory that I possessed.
With passing years you took a backseat in my life but quietly entered my child’s life the way you had entered mine. And you seemed to me so happy as if saying, “look I have found a new partner”. Even I was happy as my child befriended you and I explained to him/her the importance of loyal friends like you. You must have laughed out your heart at me when I scolded him/her for tearing you apart explaining that he/she was cruelly breaking your heart saying, “Oh come now, have you forgotten your days??” and life passed in a jiffy.
Once again I am standing here free of my responsibilities and duties with nothing to do and nowhere to go. Those other friends of mine, some of them have left me and some I have forgotten with age.
My knees now have refused to carry my burden so now I am mostly confined to my room. My eyes have grown weak over these years and need those glasses to see clearly. My hands now tremble so I cannot even think of doing those tasks that had kept me glued to them for a long time. But my heart, though weak, is still the same and advises me to be with my long-lost companion once again. And here I pick you up with pain for having ignored you time and again.
Though you have changed your attire this time from those story books and books of rhymes to the Bhagwat Gita or some novels and magazines, You are still the same. Who welcomed me with your arms wide open as if dying to embrace me and give me a tight hug. Once again ready with loads of knowledge to be pumped into my brain.
