Friend

Dedicated to my friend who has been in the same status and position after 6.5 years too. Its for Prerna. One of my best friend from college life. I never thought that we will be friend for so long. She was from IT branch, and I was from Electrical and electronics branch in our first year of college, which was 2001-02. After completion of our first year we had an option to change our branch and we both managed to change our branch to ECE. Till that time I was only aware about her name, nothing more than that. I don't know what she has heard about me, but later on I came to know only from her that she was curious to know who this Pankaj Saraswat is?She has heard about my arrogance and wanted to check that. I remember the day when we met for the first time in college when we were enrolling for our second year. She asked me something in English, but I answered that in my mother tongue Hindi. As we both were two creatures from different planet, there was nothing common between us other than our branch.And I am sure how my first impression would be on her, ( too arrogant) Anyhow we started to share a great bond. I liked the way she speaks, as English was like other planet's language at that time for me. At this time I don't know why and how but yes we talked a lot during that time.
One incident that we both will never forget was like our preparation leaves were on and my birthday falls during those days. As she didn't wish me on that day, she wished me casually once the college reopened. But somehow I was under this impression that she didn't wish me knowingly. After few months the ball was in my court, it was her birthday and I forgot to wish her. In the evening time when she was leaving from college by college bus, somebody told me that its her birthday. I ran to that bus and wished her. By that time what she was thinking was that I knew it was her birthday, but did not wish her knowingly. So not to disappoint her I said this to her that I did this intentionally. She thought I did this tit for tat.
And everything in this friendship was also not like as smooth as it sounds. We had some fights as well. All is well that ends well. To tease her I used to ask her some or other technical terms, or concept of our engineering, and in reply of this she started asking English words, sentences to me. We used to play a game of word formation in classes as well. She knows when I am joking and when I am serious. Though she has not seen much of this world, but If you will ask for advise from her, she will give you an advice as if she is DADI AMMA.
She was like a first point of contact for me in case I had any doubt in English. And this hold true today as well. Her mother's ALL THE BEST always works for me, as it always turns out in my favour. She has a strange liking for ginger biscuits, which I sent for her from Pune once. I guess if one removes the feeling of give and take from any friendship, that friendship will remain for ever. And I guess this holds true in this case. I just want to say thanks to Prerna for being such a great friend of mine.