Notes

U##r used to smoke a lot. I had nicknamed him lung cancer. I thought he'd die in the weeks to come. All my clothes used to smell of smoke because of him, they also had little holes in them. We lived in seperate rooms in an appartment. Though he had his own place, he never stayed there. He used to stay at my place. The smoke used to seep out from the other room from under my door and collect in my room. There were days the smoke was so much that I used to bang into objects while going to the bathroom at night. There were days when I had to wet a towel and cover the gap under my door. He smoked so much that I used to wonder how is he alive and breathing. He was a muslim from lucknow. He had never lived in India. Though he spoke like he had always stayed here. His family was extremely wealthy and were supposedly some descendants of the nawabs of lucknow and he had a rolls royce back home. Though he was a man of few belongings. He just had a leather jacket and a bike which nobody from his family knew he had. He used to wear borrowed shoes and clothes, apart from underwear. He used my secondary phone as his primary phone. He had peculiar dietary habits too. He ate once a day, that too only potato pulao. His tea used to get cold and form a membrane on it, only then he used to drink it. He used to sleep with his feet away from the direction of kaba and he never used to miss any of his daily namaaz's. That made sure that he used to bathe every morning. He was afraid of djinns. He told me that djinns prefered males with long hair who smelled good. That didnt scare me. He needed a constant supply of pepsi and cigarettes throughout the day. He never drank water. I tried that for a day and I had a severe nosebleed that night. He ran out of pepsi once late in the night. We went to get it from a shop which was open till late. It was raided by the police and the owner panicked and locked us inside and ran. We spent the night inside chatting. He was dating his first cousin y###### since they were kids, and married her last week. He was always on the phone with her, even when he was asleep. She was like a parasite. He used to go to lucknow to his uncles house to meet her and always stayed secretly in the womens room where other males were forbidden. He never got caught, otherwise he would have been killed. He used to scribble her name on all my belongings, which was annoying. Apart from that he was an extremely good singer and a moderately good guitar player. We used to sit in our balcony and talk about religion and politics and cinema and music and relationships. One day we were sitting, he told me he would die if y##### would leave him. I laughed at him and told him that I would feel really really really bad if that happned to me, but I woudnt die. Later that day I accidently found pictures of T###, my girlfriend of many years kissing someone else. I was shellshocked but he laughed at me and told me that it was bound to happen to me, as he had warned me in the past. How we became friends was a funny story. We had our first biochem exam. I used to know him as he was the next roll number. I called him at 4 am in the night and told him that probably I wont be giving the exam and he should say that i got sick if someone asked. He said he was thinking the same. It was a crazy idea but we both had never opened the book. I hung up the phone and went to bed. He called me back and asked me wether I would like to give it a last shot. We were going to fail anyways. I picked up my cook's bicycle and cycled to his place. He was playing the guitar. S#### was sitting there listening to him. We studied for 3 hours. And we made mnemonics on the guitar.All three got the highest marks in the class. It became a tradition after that. We would open our books at the last moment and we would do the same thing and nail it every single time. He had extraordinarily intelligence. I wonder what he was doing with his life at that time. He had applied to the royal college of surgeons but he fell short of marks. Disappointed he came to india. On one such day, while we were sitting in the balcony talking, he got a call on his phone. He got up and started walking downstairs. I could see him walking while on the phone. He walked away. He didnt return that night. He used to do that often. But he didnt return for a week. His phone was off. A week later one of his uncles came to the college to collect his documents. He had got into the royal college. He had applied with his previous years scores. He never bothered to tell me and I never spoke to him afterwards. I threw out his books and gave his bike to a friend. Many years later, last week his uncle called me up to tell me that he was getting married in lucknow. I didnt go. A couple of days after his marriage, he called me up tonight and swore at me for a while. I never intend to speak to that asshole again.