Twenty-five years is a long time, a very long time indeed! Seems quite unbelievable that so much time has gone by! Seems like yesterday that we had passed out of school. And yet, quite paradoxically, the memories are not all that fresh. It is hard to recall those nostalgic moments of everyday school life. It all seems like a dream, a dream of a life lived long, long ago!

They say that in dreams one keeps visiting places one carries pleasant memories of. MIS is one such place that has recurred with unfailing tenacity in my dreams… and one face has always been there, a face that now we all can see only in a photograph, a face always smiling and cheerful.

As I take my mind back into time, I can feel that face just by my side. We are walking along the pavement outside the school. But Vinish Gulabrani and I are not alone. Accompanying us is another face- a face so beautiful that I feel shy even glancing at it.

Yes, I was shy that evening. Shy, but happy for Vinish! He was in love, although he had never confessed it to me. But the way he spoke to her, the way she responded told me all. Love at that age is something so fresh, fresher than the morning dew and the first streak of light in the Eastern sky. The feeling was infectious and I sighed silently, for nothing in this world can be more beautiful than love.

And I was happy for Vinish that he got to have this experience so early on in life. Then a few days later, Vinish returned to class after recess with a sad face. It was the first time I saw him looking so quiet and sullen. It seemed some teacher had been keeping a watch and had seen the two spending the recess time together daily. And a warning had ensued! Then to me it had seemed a great injustice and the teacher seemed nothing less than a Bollywood villain trying to drive a wedge between two lovers (though I hardly remember now who it was). I was too young to understand why the teacher had put a curb on their togetherness; but to crush a budding love had then seemed to be the gravest of all follies! Vinish proved to be more tenacious than I had thought and was back to his cheerful self a few days later. ‘Jaane de, Tak Boss,’ he said to me with a smile on his face.

I had started losing hair in twelfth class because of Alopecia and had shaved off my pate at someone’s suggestion, who had assured that this would make the hair grow back. It did little to assuage the condition of my scalp, but sure earned me a new nickname, coined by none other than Vinish —Tak Boss he called me, shortfor Takla (Bald) Boss!

I can almost hear his voice in my mind, but I know that the voice is no more there.

“Not like this Tak Boss yaar!” I remember him saying, as he got off his own bicycle and held the bars of my cycle to show me how to grip them.

We were practicing jumps with our cycles in the school ground for our show on annual day. We had to pedal hard towards an inclined plane and then make our bikes fly as we rode over it! Vinish was the first amongst us to get it right. The rest of us just came down with a thud, as our cycles went

over the inclined plane. Mr Ghai promptly put Vinish in charge of training us, a task which he undertook without any airs! But I can never forget the way he would laugh throwing his head back when we failed again and again to emulate his feat! He remained the best!

Out of school and we were on our way in different directions. But for years, his smiling face haunted me in thoughts and in dreams! Many years later, I ended up in the writing business and discovered that there was a tool I could not do without, especially with respect to the research for my writings- the Internet. The going was slow, but gradually I got the hang of making searches on search engines. Then one day, out of the blue, came the thought of trying to search for old schoolmates. I tried a few names, but came up with nothing. I kept feeding more names from the past with little success. Then in September of 2009, I found Vinish’s email address through a search!

One would expect that I despatched an email to him immediately. But no, for some strange reason I kept postponing the correspondence. ‘Will do it one of these days,’ I promised myself time and again, but actually never got down to do it! Why? I do not really know! Months later, I got a message from Pankaj Vajpayee and became a part of the MIS 1986 group on Google. As soon as I joined, I looked desperately for a particular name but it was not there. And when the news got broken to me it was too shocking!

Death had wiped out the smiling face forever from our lives! But can anything ever wipe out the image of the same radiant and happy face from our hearts and minds?

To lose a friend is such a hard thing to do 

When there is no answer to our “why“

An emptiness grows deeply inside.

As we breathe goodbye on an empty sigh. 

From ‘To Lose A Friend, by Jeanette Cooper