#friendship A Friend Called Richard by Fiza Pathan

        A Friend Called Richard

Today was a big day for my author friend Lucie Novák as her very first book ‘A Woman with No Strings Attached’ was released today. I was one of the first people to get the book on Kindle and I know that I’m going to enjoy reading the words penned by my friend. However, when I was scanning through the digitalized pages on my tablet I heard a voice in my head saying,

“Wait and watch Fiza my dost (friend) you will reach the stars and have friends all over the world. Will you then forget me?”

Today I own a tutorial and I am an international bestselling author. I’ve got authors, poets and blogger friends from all around the globe with whom I communicate and share my experiences of writing. However, in the midst of this vast crowd sometimes…I really miss that one friend who meant a lot to me many years ago…who now I am sad to say hates the very mention of my name.

“Wait and watch Fiza, my dost (friend), you will reach the stars and have friends all over the world. Will you then forget me?”

“No Richard──I’ll never forget you.”

His name was Richard Chris Cabral and I loved him like a brother. Yet where he is now and what he is doing…I have no clue about.

My friendship with Richard began on the 3^rd of July 2007 when I was in my first year of degree college. My class was shuffled and I landed in a new extra populous class full of Psychology and English snobbish students with only one person whom I knew. That person’s name was Tanya, who wanted to major in psychology and who has remained a close family friend till this day. She was the one who made me relax and introduced me to her friends in the over populous class. It was she who introduced me to a tall lanky youth with a lot of pimples on his wheatish complexioned face. He shook my hand and when I looked into his eyes…I saw security in it. I felt that I had looked into these eyes before and then I remembered when…it was when I was a baby when I used to look into the jet black eyes of my estranged father…Richard’s eyes were just like my father’s eyes…I liked him at first sight.

Richard and I both were naughty and sort of goofy. We gossiped a lot and I used to ‘girl watch’ with him just for the fun of it. We were always making the most disgusting jokes in the group and irritated everyone with our boorishness. However, incorrigible as we were, we were just over grown babies who knew too much, especially too much sex. I think Richard and I used to be the storehouse of lewd jokes in our group…he got along well with me and I got along well with him. I even once told him that maybe we were reincarnated friends because we were just so close. Richard brushed that off as another joke but to me, our friendship felt like it was made out of faith, dust and a lot of pixie dust.

Richard and I used to talk a lot on the phone and I once even wrote a proposal letter for Richard to gift to his crush. Sadly, the ‘crush’ was ‘crushed’ and Richard thought that he should end his life that very moment…I found him the next day waiting for me at our college desk with a chess set ready for both of us to play.

Richard was handsome and so had a lot of girlfriends and crushes. I was a geek and just felt wonderful whenever I was with Richard…because we were now the best of friends.

Then came my second year of degree college…Richard did very well in his exams thanks to my coaching (come to think of it, Richard was the first student I ever tutored) and I topped in Hindi and History. I was very studious and read a lot during this period of time. However, being with Richard and having fun at college was my top priority. We were in separate classes this time, but we met every short break and at after college hours to chat, have a samosa together or to watch him play cricket in our secret lane near the college where Richard, his gang and I used to hang out most of the time. Those days were very special ones for me and making Richard smile was my biggest desire every day of the college week.

Richard started going to the gym and working out at this point of time and boy was he looking smashing after that!!! I never missed a chance to tease him about his muscles and as he blushed I would just place my hand around his shoulder and feel like a million dollars.

Richard may have been comic, witty, handsome, helpful, full of life, temperamental, moody, smart etc., but he hated to study and he especially hated to do project assignments. I loved to learn and do my assignments. So one day, in 2009, I decided to do all of Richard’s project assignments for him but I had just one condition. That condition was that Richard would take the trouble of reading over the work I had written and copying it down on paper BY HIMSELF.

Thus, I went about first doing my own assignments and then Richard’s and let all the elements be my witness…it is true that I made his assignments better than mine…always, because he was my buddy…a part of me which I did not under any circumstance want to let go of. God however is a master chess master and likes to play tricks with his pawns…it so happened one day I caught Richard making one of our group friends to copy down his project for him…THE ONE WHICH I HAD PAINSTAKINGLY WRITTEN FOR HIM UNDER THE CLAUSE THAT HE WOULD THEN WRITE IT HIMSELF!

I don’t know what came over me that day but I did something rotten that soured our friendship forever. I took the project back and Richard was left without a project to submit.

Pride? Yes it was my pride that soured the relationship but I never thought he would break away from me completely…from that day onward, Richard stopped speaking to me.

I spent my last year of Degree College as a loner. I hid my face in my books and just kept away from everyone. I cried a lot that year. The naughtiness and fun loving spirit in me disappeared. I started taking tuitions to earn some cash after college and used to immerse myself in my work (this was the foundation stone of my tutorial which exists today). During this time, Richard…my Richard ignored me like as if I were the plague; he would not even let our paths cross when we walked on the road towards our college. My silence continued and his also…we passed our degree college, he with a second class…me with a first class and moved on in life.

“Hey Fiza, you know what I told my mother about you?”

“What did you tell your mother about me Richard? That I’m a skunk?”

“No way…I told her that if she had seen Mother Mary’s statue…well, to me you look and act just like her.”

Our silence grew too long and the light of our friendship burnt out its last flame the day I sent Richard a friend request on Facebook after I had become an international author and he did not accept my request.

I miss Richard…I miss his laughter and his awkward smile…I miss the sound of his voice and his rib tickling jokes…I miss his caring nature and his childlike nature…I miss the smell of his after shave lotion and the fun times we used to have…I miss his comradeship and his silliness...I miss the touch of his brotherly hand and the way I used to lean on his back while we bitched about our professors…I miss his frank nature and his Goa stories…but most of all I miss Richard Chris Cabral because no one can take his place…the place of a loving brother.

I don’t eat samosas anymore and only crack jokes when I am with my students…clean jokes…I think?!  If ever Richard does read this article which will be visible to thousands of readers, will he change his mind and become my friend again?

Lucie Novák my author friend would definitely want me to show this article to Richard but my wounds can heal later, I've got to read her book and it is a good one. Also tomorrow is a hectic day for me at the tutorial and I’ve got 10^th grade essays to correct. Wounds don’t heal fast and real friendship is tested but not broken…I'm ready to be Richard’s friend again…because I miss him──for he is a gem worth a few tears of love.

Copyright © 2014 Fiza Pathan

Image courtesy: http://www.morguefile.com/archive/display/184591

As Long As You Love Me by Fiza Pathan

As Long As You Love Me

A Tribute by Fiza Pathan

Today I want to tell you dear reader about my very first student. I always wanted to be a teacher right from the 5^th grade and my life was filled with a fascination for subjects like History, English literature, English Language, Geography etc. It is no wonder then that I took up History as my majoring subject at college along with Sociology, the study of society which I found pretty interesting.

I was in my second year of Degree College when Radhika Khansaheb came into my life. She was seven years younger than me and was studying in the 7^th grade at the school in which I also studied when I was a kid. Radhika…I can’t tell you much about her name for we never really used to call her ‘Radhika’, she hated it. As long as I knew her, Radhika Khansaheb was always called ‘Radhi’…she loved being called that as it made her feel special.

Radhi’s mother was my Geography tutor when I was in the 10^th grade at school. She was a really good Geography teacher and I owe all what I know about the subject to her. However, Radhi did not in the least like or love Geography; she found it a boring subject…she liked English Literature and English Language as she felt it was more creative…more like her.

I was made to take on Radhi to tutor her in Geography and History, her worst subjects. This meant that along with preparing endless projects for college, I had now to prepare study material and teach a student…a ‘for real’ student for the first time in my life. I was waiting for this opportunity for years and now my childhood dream of becoming a teacher was finally becoming a reality.

Radhi loved my coaching and we became very close friends. We both had a crush on a musical icon, her – Michael Jackson, me – Elvis Presley. During our teaching and learning sessions we got to know each other very well. Radhi was a radical with a feminine touch to it. She scorned at the social norms of the day and loved wearing hot shorts and tight fitting T-shirts with her belly exposed. I was more conservative in my casual Tantra branded T-shirts and jeans…Radhi loved my dark blue jeans…dark blue was her favourite colour.

Radhi hated studying and was obsessed on getting me a boyfriend from my college. We used to laugh and crack senseless jokes about boys at her school and my college and we used to yet get her homework for the week done.

I remember my first pay too…it was 2,500/- for a month and at that point of time…that kind of cash felt like Alibaba’s gold. I remember saving the whole lot in the bank and Radhi shook her head from side to side calling me a miser…she would have preferred if I had spent that money buying some hipster jeans…at least, that is what she would have done if she had got that kind of cash.

The 7^th grade ended and Radhi was now contemplating on the idea of starting to like Geography and History…I was so overjoyed…my teaching had not gone all to waste.

After the exams Radhi went off with her family in a car to Pune while I, a very rich college second year student cleared out all the crap that I used to stuff under my desk at college and celebrated my first year of teaching by treating myself to a bowl full of oily chicken tandoori (yep…they sell stuff like that at my college canteen); I then went out biking around my building complex trying in vain to shed off the pounds I was putting on which later on led to me becoming terribly obese in the final year of graduation.

It was Easter vigil night and my whole family was getting ready to go and hear mass at our local church when suddenly my mother received a call on her mobile. It was one of the eldest P.T.A members on the line who wanted to inform us about a great mishap. Radhi’s car had met with a terrible accident. Both her father and mother (my Geography teacher) were already dead…burnt to ashes in no time while Radhi who during the accident was thrown out of the car and her head smashed against the ground…she had died on the way to the hospital with her body parts in pieces.

Radhi was dead…Radhi…was…dead…my student…was…dead…one of my coolest friends…was…now…dead…

I was there at the funeral and watched the bodies as they were brought into the crematorium one by one. There was nothing much to bring of my teacher and her husband as they were both burnt to ashes…but the doctors had sewed Radhi’s body parts and head together again for the funeral…they dressed her up like an Indian bride…I was the first to walk next to her body wrapped up carefully in a snow white shroud which seemed less paler than the cheeks of this little doll that lay there with her eyes closed forever…she wasn’t even 13 years old.

While I stared at her mangled head in a dazed state, Radhi’s grandmother came up to me and said,

“She always loved your classes and the way you taught her. She couldn’t wait to go to the 8^th grade and study with you again.”

That did it…I wept…I wailed and cried making everyone in their fancy embroidered white salvaar kurta’s stare at me with pain written all over their faces.

Six years have come and gone and I’ve opened up my own tutorial and library. I’m an American bestselling author and a hard core Theosophist. Six years…since Radhi, that beautiful and playful girl has died. She always planned on getting me done up at a beauty parlour and getting me a date with a hot college dude…all these funny dreams and wishes died with her as her body was incinerated in that crematorium at Shivaji Park.

There are dozens of stuff in my house which reminds me of my Radhi and her girly ways which were quite different from my tom boyishness. She left me rings and nail polish; silver earrings and a golden brooch; green Gujrathi bangles and a tube of peach hand wash; an old VCD of Elvis Presley’s L.A. concerts and some friendship bands which have special messages printed upon them:

‘Best Friends Forever’

‘Teachers Can be Smart Too’

‘We love Mother Earth’

‘I Want To Be Your Friend’

‘You Are Special To Me’

However, the band I like best is a blood red one which I can’t wear anymore as it does not fit my wrists because I’ve grown obese has this inscribed on it:

‘As long As You Love Me’

Whoa…Radhi was prophetic; she beat Justin Bieber to the title of his own song! Radhi was like that even in her essays which I read every time we would finish a Civics chapter. I’ve taught hundreds of kids by now, but I'm guilty…because in all my students, I try to find a trace of Radhi── my pupil and my friend. I believe in a heaven and I know Radhi is up there somewhere laughing at all the goofy stuff my students and I do at class…but I bet she too misses me just like I miss her pretty but innocent girlish face.

Copyright © 2014 by Fiza Pathan

Image courtesy: Morgue File and http://www.dhgate.com

Nirmala: The Mud Blossom: Coming Soon To Cry Out To Your Heart

There is a difference between the cry of the cock and the bleating of a young lamb…there also is a difference between the gaze of the wise owl and the stare of the fanged serpent. In this very way I too am different from you.

There is a difference between the blood shed on the battle field and the blood drawn out by the physician’s needle…there also is a difference between the hot sandy desert of Arabia and the cold bleakness of the Arctic. In this very same way I too am different from you.

You were born in a hospital and your mother took you into her arms gently, as if you were a toy made of china glass. Your father washed his hands thrice before he even touched your cheeks and looked into your eyes fantasizing whose eyes you had got, your father’s jet black eyes or your mother’s honey brown ones.

This is the difference between you dear reader and me . . .  for your family took you home after you were born . . . whereas mine dumped me into a dustbin near the clinic where I was born, all because I was a girl.

Unwanted by all and the stench of the rubbish that we all call garbage──these were the shrines of my dreams and the footpaths that led to the dark world of gender differentiation. In dirt did I find my solace. In the filth of the slum did I find my home.

My name is Nirmala Acharya and I was rejected by my society because I was born a female. The pain of not being wanted has scarred my flesh several times with the belting I get daily. My clothes smell of human excreta and my hair has dozens of knots in them, along with some lice which I pick out with my slum dwelling urchins who are my friends. I was born just like you, but you were luckier…far luckier than me for I bet your parents didn't think of tossing you in the garbage just because they did not like what was between your legs. I also bet you have never been beaten before with a belt and that the buckle of the belt never damaged your knee and made you limp…it hurts badly, but I'm used to it after all, I'm just a girl.

I study too you know. I've got books and pencils and stuff but do you know where I study? I study under one of the street lights in our slum which is in Bandra. I'm a topper in my class but no one comes to watch me receive my awards on Prize Day. Who cares? After all, gender discrimination is the in-thing and I'm the dummy that gets on being punched all the time.

Did you know that a rat bit me once? It tore at the flesh on my ankle while I was trying to study under the street lamp one night in the middle of all the human excreta and garbage…that hurt too but I forgave the poor beast, I just think he did not know how to behave himself…maybe he had not had such a tough life as I had…maybe the little brute was not dumped in the dustbin when he was born???

I rarely cry, for crying is useless; it only gives you a head ache and a blocked nose. I'm gross when I blow my nose because then I rub the snot off my face with the back of my hand and then I wipe it on to my clothes that I wear…I guess you are not as gross as me because your mother and father must have taught you good manners, etiquette and stuff like that. See, I'm so smart, I know what the word ‘etiquette’ means, pretty good for a school girl who sits under street lights to get through her homework don’t you think so?

I don’t watch movies; I've never seen a movie in a theatre in my whole life. However, I love to read. I love reading books especially books written by the famous British author Charles Dickens. I like his works a lot because, I can empathize with his characters, especially Oliver Twist and David Copperfield only problem is that these two characters are boys…and I'm a girl, an unwanted girl who was thrown in the dustbin. However let’s not be harsh, the world of books is a beautiful place to be in and most importantly it keeps up my spirits especially after a hard day of being beaten up and abused.

I don’t have many girls as friends except for the few naked street urchins who run around the Bandra Reclamation slum and urinate near the garbage bins. I love them, for they love me for who I am…smelly, dark and filthy me. However, I'm a bit different from them as I have a dream. I want to be a doctor and treat patients. I love science and mathematics; they are the two subjects in which I really score very well. I don’t go for tuitions or any classes…can’t afford them and I don’t need them for I may have been thrown into the dustbin, but I guess the garbage made me super smart.

I must be boring you, for you must be reading much better things about girls like me in the newspapers in Mumbai (India) like:

• Rapes
• Molestation
• Eve Teasing
• Dowry Crises
• Bride Burnings
• Female Infanticide
• Female Foeticide etc.

The media has sensationalized these issues and I read all about these cases cover to cover, under the street lamp at the dead of night. I wonder why people like reading about rapes? They say it is for awareness and to create empathy…however, I don’t really think that is the real reason why we read about rapes. I think we like to read rapes for entertainment…because it is sensationalized…because it is interesting to read about the gory details…because you think it won’t happen to you…but who am I to talk about philosophy to you dear reader for I'm just a girl…who turned one day into a mud blossom.

Do my words intrigue you? Do my words make you wonder what will become of me in the near future? Is my slum an eyesore for the whole country…well if you think my slum stinks then you have no idea what my life is like.

My name is Nirmala Acharya and I'm coming into your world soon in Fiza Pathan’s novel titled ‘Nirmala: The Mud Blossom’.

Copyright © 2014 Fiza Pathan

http://www.amazon.com/NIRMALA-Mud-Blossom-Fiza-Pathan-ebook/dp/B00M9ORT9K/

Discovering MYSELF!!!!!: Incredible India :)

Discovering MYSELF!!!!!: Incredible India :): I had a bad day yesterday!!! My hormones were agitated giving me a restless mood. Through out the day I read about the status of women in...

Friendly Animals: Puff Throated Babbler

Friendly Animals: Puff Throated Babbler: Another Babbler today and another bird that enjoys long baths. The Puff Throated Babbler ( Pellorneum ruficeps ) is found aroun...

MacMyth: Apple’s design history by industrial designer Hart...

MacMyth: Apple’s design history by industrial designer Hart...: Apple Likely to Unveil iWatch Soon  There is a possibility that Apple may unveil an iWatch somewhere later this year though it would no...

MacMyth: Apple’s Brand New Xcode Programming Language

MacMyth: Apple’s Brand New Xcode Programming Language: Apple recently unveiled Swift, a brand new Xcode programming language which is said to be superior to Objective C, considering it to be f...