A Memoir: From a Friend to a Friend

The wholesome joy of watching sports is further accentuated when an entire group is following the frenzy and the activity happening on the field. 

The yells and the sighs get heightened, but then that's the whole point, isn't it: rooting for a favourite team or a player with your cronies who understand the passion and the correct emotion that is brewing within because it is brewing within them as well?

But what if you are the odd man/woman out in an entire group which though does follow sports, doesn't feel the mad rush that you feel and experience with each and every single match?

And in the entire group, what if, you have a friend who is perhaps closer to you than anyone else - a sort of a secret keeper for those things which you can't and don't want to share with anyone else, even within the group?

This particular friend and you have a lot of things in common, just as you don't share similar tastes. You have tiffs and arguments, you have your sour and dour days together, almost as much as you have some brilliantly bright sunny days which you feel you can treasure forever and ever...

When it comes to the sporting arena, you are a sports nut, and acutely so, while your friend prefers to be the sane opposite; you go on ranting and ranting about "this player and that team", "this record and that statistics"; nothing is there to divert your conscious attention to other subjects apart from your favourites and non-favourites.

Your friend is by your side: amused and bemused, listening to whatever you are spouting like being in a traumatic delirium, wondering how to cut you off or probably bring you back to the ground zero of mundane life, but still stays by your side because of just one plain reason: Friendship!

Trying his/her level best to stop you, he/she tries to ignore you as much as possible but your infectious enthusiasm rubs in, invariably ending up as a catalyst for their fandom; learning to understand some of the nuances while cautioning you not to go overboard in all your charged zeal and love.

When your favourite wins, you have to call your friend just to share the news as if you are selected as an international award recipient; and though he/she might not be sharing the same level of unfathomable glee, there is an effort involved to be participative about the game, just so that you might not be disappointed because of indifference.

It goes on and on, till there comes an end to all such good things."Life" takes control, you have to part with him/her; career and job prospects are more important making it a necessity to leave your hometown, leaving behind just memories...

You can't help it because it's necessary; nor can you forget your friendship and even though modern technology is there offering immediate interaction, it can't beat the frequent face-to-face banters and chats; and though there is always the knowledge that the banters will continue, perhaps after a few years, there is always the question of will it be the same?

Time matures everyone as nothing else ever does and you and your friend won't be an exception to that rule; in the now highly evolving and busy world which will reach new heights in the future, will such talk just be restricted to a seemingly one-sided interest?

Maybe it will, and maybe it won't; but then at least there will be memories about the present to discuss in the future, memories which will linger on forever making a smile flicker on the face of its own accord making you smile even you want to cry bitterly missing your trivia sharing and superior knowledge spouting days...

P.S.: Dedicated to my best friend who will be leaving our hometown for pursuing her management course and who in spite of all her misgivings about sports, listens to my incessant blabber however irritating they might be!