Memories, Music, and Him

His guitar was my last memory of him.

The wooden instrument had grown weary from inactivity. I did not play music myself, but always appreciated it. My college days consisted of as many cassettes as papers turned in at the last moment - the former were a cure for the malady of the latter. Classics from the olden days, the spicier tunes from contemporary movies, and many hits from the West - all of them found a place in my collection. The hostel folks gathered at my wing whenever they were in the mood for music. They knew, after all, that I‌ always was.

In the years that followed, my job came along and my passion for music withered away. Like it was with love, the feeling had persisted over the years, but its expression was relegated to idle moments stolen for oneself on the weekends. It still paved the path to nostalgia which one felt akin to spending time with one’s old friends, from times when nothing but the memories and a few bonds remain. And this friend of mine was one of these people who had stayed in touch.

He was not the likeliest friend, even though we were assigned to be roommates. He did not like to read books like I‌ did. He did not have an affinity for sports like me. But most importantly, he did not like Salman Khan’s movies - he preferred Hollywood and the likes of Clint Eastwood. While liking foreign films was fine, he also claimed that Mr Khan was more of a performer than an actor. Now that the days have gone by, I realise the truth in his words, but the vigour of youth meant we had a few disagreements back in the day.

The first thing which made us bond was this guitar of his. a few students kept instruments in their hostel rooms, but most did not play it since they claimed to not have the time. In reality, he was perhaps the only one who could play the guitar. Whenever he sat down with the instrument in anyone’s room, the rest of the wing gathered there. Before lights out, he treated us to mini-concerts where he sang songs - in English, in Hindi, as well as his native Gujarati. His voice flowed along with the notes, an accompaniment rather than the haphazard addition on top of a tune which was what it seemed to be for anyone else who sang along with him. College days are arguably the best days of one’s adult life, and for me, they certainly were.

He never played songs from movies which Salman Khan appeared in. More than a choice of preference, he did it to get to me - a conscious abstinence of music I‌ liked was one of the few things which ticked me off. Nonetheless, the guitar was what got us close. We spent a decent amount of time without it too, at tea stalls and cheap restaurants which were tea stalls with a tin roof and more variety in food. The moments we spent here led him to become my closest friend. He remained so until the day he died.

I spent many moments in the canteen with him, moving on from a stage of debate about the quality of Bollywood movies to a stage of intimacy where we shared our ambitions and our deepest fears with each other. He was a friend unlike any other I ‌had, not only because of the time I‌ spent with him in the college canteen playing truant, but the confessions we made to each other in the dark of the night, with our textbooks lying next to us, its contents never speaking out louder than the matters of the heart.

He told me I‌ would be the first of us to marry. Not because I‌ was a romantic - I never dated in college, neither did he - but because I‌ was the kind who committed. I did marry before him, during the third year into my job, and he travelled all the way from the other side of the world to attend my wedding.

A few days ago, it was the college reunion, the twentieth anniversary of our graduation, which he was coming to the city for. Usually, we Skyped each other from different ends of the world - I‌ excited about the prospect of seeing him in person for the first time in more than a couple of years.

The plane journey was uneventful enough, if a twelve hour journey across the planet could ever be called that. He landed in the city on time. One of the first people he called was me. He said he would hire a taxi on his way back home - his parents hadn’t come because he wanted to surprise them, so they were uninformed about his arrival. I never heard from him again.

It was around the evening that I was wondered why he hadn’t texted, so I gave him a call. The service providers said that his phone was switched off. I let the matter be, but had a disturbed sleep that night. When I woke up the next morning, a notification from the WhatsApp group we had formed greeted me. It was an extension of the bad dream I‌ could no longer remember, but appeared to be realer to me than most other things which happened in real life.

He had met with an automobile accident en route to his home, and succumbed to his injures soon after. His parents did not know he was in the city until the hospital authorities contacted them after finding contact information in his wallet. The news had trickled down to us overnight; it lingered on long afterwards. The reunion turned into more of a tribute for him than an occasion for fun, even if most of the people did try to have a good time. Perhaps they could too, as one often could when the dead aren't yours. But those who knew him could only smile once in a while amidst casual conversation, even as sorrow lingered along anything which came and went. Even then, the time I ‌spent with my friends was the best I had spent in many years. I‌ was expecting a weekend where I‌ would feel like my youth, but because of what happened the mood was sombre, yet it gave me a state of unexpected calm, away from the hustle of life which I entered after leaving this campus, which hadn't changed over the years.

When I returned home after staying at the campus over a couple of days as a part of the reunion, I found my wife greeting me with an air of uneasiness in the air. She knew how close I was to my late friend. While it would be a long time to come before any of it could seem to be more than just a bad dream, I was not visibly affected. I went about with my work, helped my wife in her chores, and taught my son elementary grade physics, even though I‌ no longer preferred to engage in conversation more than was necessary.

It was on the next weekend when I‌ found enough time to pull out my CD player which was fading into irrelevance as the modern era gripped us. But this fall in stature was less than that of the songs from the 90s, which I primarily stored in the form of cassettes. Sitting on my armchair, with the curtains drawn now that the evening had set in, I closed my eyes, and thought of the days that were. I‌ thought of my friend. I‌ thought of how much I loved him, and how I‌ wouldn’t have minded seeing him again last Saturday. I wouldn’t have minded seeing him again, anytime.

I‌ found myself lost in the tunes of the classical instruments which were mostly no longer in use because of the rise of Western influence in mainstream music. I opened my eyes, with my head resting on my arms, when I‌ realised his old guitar was still with me. I got up, even as the song reverberated throughout the study. He had given it to me as a parting gift before leaving the country. It was an offering of a promise that he would stay in touch. Despite my many apprehensions, he did.

I wiped off the thin layer of dust on top of the guitar. The frets were stained and the strings worn out. It could do with some repairing. But I‌ sat down on my sofa, took out my phone, and tried to tune the thing. An appropriately tuned instrument, he used to say, was what made a terrible musician sound appropriately bad.

It would take a long time to get used to the face that he was no more, but I‌ promised to myself at that time I‌ would learn how to play the guitar. And when I‌ did, the first song I would play would be from a Salman Khan movie. It would be the only right to do, considering everything the instrument, the friendship, and music meant for me.