Ex – Friend

“When Bipasha can be a friend with Dino why can’t you?” I joked.
C’mon I have never refused to be a friend with either of them, Rajat said laughing.
Now don’t get off the track, you know exactly what I am talking about.
Rajat for sure knew what I was talking about because this conversation was now going on for more than an hour.
He again met Shivani today and he has again made a mess of the situation. He got totally drunk, fell down on the dance floor and he didn’t even remember when and how I carried him back to home.
This wasn’t the first time such a thing happened, 9 out of the 10 times he has met Shivani after their breakup, he has always created a situation where he has embarrassed himself along with her.
And yesterday night it was the worst, and the reason as everyone in the party later talked about was Mayuresh, Shivani’s new boyfriend.
It was now over a year that both of them broke up with 2 attempts from Rajat for reconciliation.
When they were in love, they were really the talk of the town. Sometimes you see a couple and you say they are really “made for each other” and that was with both of them.
Their relationship lasted for a year, they started off with petty fights and which at last grew to a big one and it all ended.
What went in between them, nobody knew for sure but the gossip was that Rajat was pretty possessive about her and would always want her to be with him and not talk to other guys. In the initial days of relationship he was fine with whatever she was doing, wherever she was going, he had no complaints but later he became more and more possessive, would keep on telling her not to talk to some guys, to dress up in a particular manner and not to dress up in other way.
Shivani also never seemed to mind the things he would say initially, she would love to dress the way he wanted her to. She liked to be preached by him. She knew that all he was doing or saying was because of the reason that he loved her so much and she used to enjoy being so special to someone.
But later on as he became more and more critical of her ways, it started pinching her and at times she started to argue about not always telling her what to do. It used to result in small fights but either of them would come up and talk to other and everything they had fought about was gone.
But the day they broke up, it is said that Rajat said something really bad (something about her character) and that was the end. She couldn’t take anymore; she would have forgiven anything but him talking about her character. She realized that everything he said was out of temper, but she wasn’t ready to let him go on those grounds. That day might just have been the triggering point of the things going within her for the past so many days.
The relationship came to an end, for 2 month none of them talked to the other, didn’t even face each other but slowly Rajat started missing her a lot. He tried to talk to her but she wouldn’t, she wouldn’t take his calls either. But one day he could get her to talk to him in private and all she said was “it is all over between us and there is no love left within me for you”.
He was mad, mad like a dog. For next 15 days he rarely came out of his home, wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t do anything but shed tears whenever he was alone.
Lastly when I came the third time to talk to him, he said “how come can she forget me? How can she say she has no love left for me? All that love of her for me was fake? Doesn’t she miss me like I do?
“I guess it is very easy for her to forget me, and if she can forget me I can also forget her, I won’t die without her”.
Listening to him I just wondered, was he right? Is it really the case that he only has been yearning for her and it has been easy for her? If both were truly in love then she should also had been in a bad shape and would try to contact him (some part of me just wished that she would call him and both can talk and sort things out).

I just sat by his side and listened, I knew once he vent his anger he will become bit normal and it was really essential for his recovery to shout or curse like that, to say whatever comes to his mind then. I never saw him in such a bad shape.
I spent next 2 days with him, took him out of the house and tried to cheer him up.

He started to recover but again whenever he used to see her the same old feelings started to grow within him (he said he would forget her, but he knew within himself that he can’t do that even if she has).
Another 3 months passed and he was up again and ready to go in front of Shivani. He told this to me and I rejected it outright. “Please don’t do that Rajat”, you will again get hurt. “Just forget her and move on”.
“I can’t forget her”, you know I love her and when she is in front of me how can I forget all those things that happened between us, how can I forget that we both loved each other so much.
“You don’t love her you loved her” and if you feel any comfortable then just talk to her like any other person, don’t talk to her about love or anything like that and I am sure she would respond if you talk to her in that manner. Just try to be friends, if that helps.
But Rajat never listened to me. He got his chance after a few days when they were together onto a picnic with other friends.
During the entire trip he kept on following her and once he could get her alone, to talk. He told her that he wanted to get back and questioned how she can be so hard. How she can not remember him when he remembers her moment?
She was much milder in her responses this time.
“Look Rajat, whatever happened between us was bad, I do realize that and things shouldn’t have gone to that extent when we were really in love” but then things took a wrong turn, I guess we were wrong somewhere or our love missed that extra something.
I don’t blame you completely for what happened; it was the fault of both of us. You never understood and I couldn’t make you understand.
I know what you went through; I know how hard it must have been for you. But believe me it wasn’t any easy for me. The only difference between you and me had been that I couldn’t express the pain, the anguish the way you did. I was also in love with you, I also missed you a lot but I realized that I can’t end my life at that point and I had to move on and so I did. I moved on, you might say that I was hard or heartless but I would say that I was just that bit stronger than you.
And now I suggest you, you too move on. Move on with the life, there could be lot in store for you; you just need to move ahead in life to find that out.
Going forward let’s just be friends, let’s forget what happened in the past. It would make life easy for both of us. Take care of yourself and if you need me sometime I would be happy to be there as a friend.
That was the last time she had such a long talk with him.

Even after Shivani’s talk, Rajat couldn’t come to terms with the fact that she is no more in his life and would never be.
Nevertheless he tried to come out of the big mess he was in. He tried to get his life back on track. But whenever he would meet Shivani, within a group of friends or see her at college he couldn’t control his emotions.
She would always say hello and ask him the usual questions but he wasn’t pretty comfortable with ‘friend’ thing.
Whenever he would meet her inadvertently he would bring up a topic of their past and would popup the question of their getting back.
Probably all these actions of his did nothing more than making Shivani’s decision firmer.
He would make comments amongst his friends about breakup and girls being heartless whenever she was around.

“What are you thinking?” My voice brought him back from his stream of thoughts.
“Nothing”, he shrugged.
I just don’t know how to handle it. I try my level best to come over that past relationship but it keeps on coming back. I just don’t know what to do? Honestly I myself don’t want to live my life this way and for sure don’t want to create problems in her life.

Is it really hard for a guy to get over a relationship then a girl? I never thought that way. As others I was under the impression that it must be real easy for a guy and must be too difficult for a girl. But for sure I was the witness to a situation entirely different.
Probably being friend with your ex is not what guys are best at, whereas girls might be handling it pretty well, why?

Shivani handled the breakup well, came out of it and moved on to a new relation. It was easy for her to consider Rajat as his friend probably because she was able to totally detach herself which Rajat couldn’t do. The way I saw it in Rajat’s behavior I was pretty sure that he would never be able to consider Shivani as just a “friend”.

But that night’s actions of Rajat, did something good for him, probably that was the last nail in the coffin of their already dead relationship. Though he did behave in the worst possible manner but he, after seeing someone else with Shivani got the message loud and clear, that it was all over.
The one thing that I had been trying hard to make him understand, Shivani had been trying to make him understand and probably he might himself be trying hard to understand but couldn’t, was clear to him in just one sight of her being with someone else.
And the way he behaved after seeing Shivani with someone else, probably that was the last outburst (that would have been necessary).


After that day I never made him understand anything, I guess never again he had a talk with Shivani but he just understood. He got hold of himself and the situation around him.
And he succeeded in getting his life back to normal.
Never again he tried to contact Shivani, instead if he would saw her, he would just walk away.
Unlike a movie ending they could never get back again. After 6 months Rajat went to Delhi to take classes for MBA entrance and got enrolled himself into MBA after a year of preparation.
After 3 years we had a small reunion, he came down to attend the party. And as we were enjoying the party, Shivani walked up to him (he knew that she was engaged now and was going to marry in 2 months time), “Hi Rajat, how are you?”
He was taken aback for a moment seeing Shivani in front of him.
“Hey, I am good. Heard that you are engaged, congratulations”. And before she could have said thanks, he moved out from that place uttering “excuse me” to the air.
Even today he wasn’t able to consider her as a friend.