Friends

I have got so many things to say when I say "friend". Coz in this world next to God and parents I value them as the pillars of life. Upto an age of 18 years I lived in a place where my parents did not have any relatives. We were far from our native state. So was my condition also. I didnt have cousins around me. I always loved to have people around me. We lived far away from the city life. But somehow I believe it was a grace also.
We lived in a place named "Bondamunda". The spring breeze ,the chirp of sparrows,which was very common there, sunny days and evening showers are still fresh in my memory. I even didn't have school friends near my house. We had a blooming garden right in front of our house. It was my father's everyday two hour of toil that brought out a garden which was the best around the whole place.I still remember two mango trees which was around ten feet tall. Well I was too small for it. Every evening after returning form school I nearly spent more than an hour in the garden. I observed reptiles hunting the bugs, caterpillars winding the leaves of ginger plant and sometimes snakes that took shelter in the small shrubs. This natural treat gave everything to fill my childhood memories.
After my tenth standard my parents finally decided to shift towards a township near our city. The township named as "Jagada". Now everything had changed. We lived in an apartment. There was no more any garden around the apartment. It was more a town type of civilization. Well I had now reached the senior standard of my school and we had to walk like the other senior guys. Now what I remember about those days was lot of cycling and tuitions, roaming in the evenings with friends. My friends were the ones with no girl friends and we always used to make lot of gigs. Sometimes one of us tease the other at this failure but inside mumbled with the same pain...ha ha...
Over a half dozen months later I reached the pre-graduate. Most of my friends had now left .They got themselves shifted to other competitive schools. Entrance fevers had now cropped into everyone's mind. My nearest pals Ajay, Ram , Subhranshu, Pallavi, Supriya ,Ankush, Rajeev and Bharadwaj,we all still clinged to the same school. After a couple of years of high school struggles ,it was time for us to thrive out for places and move ahead in life.
I was the unluckiest of them all. I had to bid goodbye because a new place was waiting for me. Well it was nothing new but my own native state and unknown to the fact that a lot was ahead to come....