Dear Naina,

I don’t even know why I am taking the pain to write this to you, because I have been seeing how inconsequential this discussion always turns out to be. The way things have been developing, I doubt whether you would even care to read this. But still if it doesn’t hurt much, extract five minutes from your precious time to hear me out.

You surely don’t need to know what you have meant to me. Be it the times when you were a source of support and encouragement through my lows, or when I spent with you some awesome moments during the highs, my admiration for you and for the relation that we share had reached a level that I cannot articulate.

But somewhere down the track, things did go wrong. It’s pointless trying to pass the blame or cite instances, but the underlying fact is that gradually and inadvertently, I felt a distance develop between us, which got worse by the day. I still can’t figure out the reason; did I err somewhere on the way, or was it just a bunch of expectations I did not deserve to keep? Whatever it was, it’s too late now to analyse and amend.

But before we part ways, I want to make clear a thing or two. Don’t mistake my attachment to you as my weakness. In better times, your friendship was my strength. But today, the lack of it doesn’t make me weak by any measure. I always thought our need for each other’s friendship was mutual. But now when I see that you need me no more, let me tell you that I don’t need you either. I jolly well understand that an excessive dependence on someone can jeopardise my self-reliability, and I am not ready to do that. But at the same time I must inform you that the justifications you have always given me in terms of we being different people never went down as a good excuse for your indifference. It’s very easy to get the monkey off your back by saying that you are a different person and hence find it difficult to live up to the expectations of your friend. If you think that is a great excuse, then I have a piece of my mind to share with you. However different two close friends may be, they are, more often than not, able to gauge each other’s feelings right. In that view, then, your unresponsiveness to my need most of the times only suggests that the closeness I once thought existed was just a figment of my imagination, a mirage which I desperately tried to convert into a reality. But alas! I was wrong.

There were times in the recent past when I desperately needed to talk to you, when I was low, when things just didn’t seem right, and where I felt that I needed the same Naina who had once been the sole friend I believed I could rely on whenever needed. I don’t know if you have ever experienced this treatment, but suddenly when such a person turns his back on you, the soreness is very severe. I can hardly blame you for this, because come to think of it: you are not answerable to me for anything you do. You have a life of your own, and I can’t expect you to change just for my sake. But, the least you could have done is to have been honest; if not with me, then at least with yourself. Instead, you kept reiterating that you valued our friendship. And each time you did that, it reinforced a hope in my mind that there was scope for things to get better. You’d rather have told me upfront that I was a bug you could no longer bear. It would have made things much simpler for both of us.

Please don’t even bother to reply to this letter, especially if you are going to repeat the clichéd argument that your ways of showing your concern are very different, and that I have not been able to understand them. Even if that is true, I am sorry to say that I don’t subscribe to your explanations. If you think I am a kid whom you can convince into believing otherwise by way of such feeble arguments, you are sadly mistaken. I am a simple person who interprets things as he sees them, and then forms an opinion based on them, which can’t be changed by merely mincing words. You can tell me a million times that you hold our friendship in high esteem, and I will disregard your words as many times, simply because it does not reflect in your actions any more.

If you wonder why I never said this to you earlier, it is just because somewhere down in my heart, I still hold a lot of respect for you as someone who had once been one of my closest friends. And I know for a fact that this respect can never die.

So smile, Naina, for you have nothing to lose even after all that has transpired. For even if you disregard this letter as just another piece of paper and move on, you can rest assured that I will never fail you as a friend, in case you should ever need me again. Much as I might try, my reverence for you can never fade away.

I would only be extremely delighted if I were to believe that there could be a solution to this deadlock that we reached. But I know this deadlock is here to stay, and I am ready to reconcile to this situation. All that I can do at this stage is to assure you that I will always be there for you, no matter what. And I ask for no reciprocation in return any more.

Love,

Nakul  

(Page 253-256, ‘Watch out! We are MBA’, by Nishant Kaushik)