Frank O’Connor, considers the novel in terms of the passage of time.
“To me a novel is something that’s built around the character of time, the nature of time, and the effects that time has on events and characters. When I see a novel that’s supposed to take place in twenty-four hours, I just wonder why the man padded out the short story.”
I suppose this letter to you, then, is a novel.
We have memories,
you and I, Old friend
From when we didn’t know
What memories meant
Tahar Ben Jelloun wrote a book called The Last Friend. I read about him the first time in Teju Cole's debut - Open City.
It made me think that if this pandemic has its way then I have already made my last friend. It is a narrow but distinct possibility. And that’s something to consider huh?
And if I indeed have, I can't place a finger on who it might be. It is hard to view a relationship as something solid that comes with a date of purchase and expiry. (And at what cost?)
Friendships are fluid equations. Who remembers the date we first met. Our first call as friends. The first memory that only we share, you and I. And who knows if have had our last one?
The year is 1996. Bombay is now three months into Mumbai. Michael Jackson will arrive in another four. (We would go on to witness the lights of his concert from our terraces and feel we made it in life).
You walk into the classroom, most benches are occupied, you know the drill even at that age, you go ask if this seat is free, two of them say no. That's a surprise. In the old school everyone just shifted to make space. It's the first day of school, how did they forge alliances for benches so soon? Welcome to the city.
Lucky number three then.
“Do you mind if I sit here?”
“Sure, settle in.”
25 years in this city today. Or was it yesterday or 5 days from now, a week ago? Not sure. All I know is I made my first friend in this city on a 13th of June like today.
Sometimes you do remember the date, the first memory. Sentiments of least value, yet priceless.
The ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self, the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.
- from "Friendship" in David Whyte’s CONSOLATIONS
Walking the streets of Bombay, its cafes, pubs, pizzerias, galleries, beaches, all the old haunts, are all witness to the making and forging of many of my friendships.
The city is tethered to my friends, the perennial backdrop to their memories. Or perhaps it is the other way round. Perhaps it is my friends who tether me to this city, a constant frame of reference in an ever changing city.
In the decade of my now distant youth, friends came in different forms.
The collective - School friends, college friends, work friends, family friends, friends from French and building friends. Then the individual - the walk friend, the cigarette friend, the bootleg for dry days friend, the midnight friend, the gossip friend and the shoulder friend. The friend of blurry lines and the chai and the rain and vada pav friend, the khursheed at three, the bachelor’s at four friend, the drive friend, the stars and lake friend, and the heartbreak and coffee and cake friend.
As you get older, these labels begin to wear off.
Friends become choices reflecting our own uncertain identities. No longer a constant. What ties you to your city then?
In Amit Chaudhuri's Friend of my Youth, the narrator is a writer called Amit Chaudhuri, and the protagonists of his narration a friend called Ramu and a city called Bombay. Ramu has trouble reconciling with adulthood, both his and his city's. The story is set in what the author reluctantly calls South Bombay, to him (and to many) it is just Bombay.
It is fascinating to read about known but unfamiliar places of your own city. Makes you reconsider your connection to it. As if you’ve seen an hitherto unknown side to a friend.
As you get older, as the labels begin to wear off, as your friends get sure of their identities, it is fascinating to read the known but unfamiliar trappings of their personalities, and that of your own place amongst them.
In Chaudhuri's novel, towards the end Ramu begins to make excuses and steps out of the writer's schedule in the city, so that he, the writer, may spend more time with his family. Ramu is one amongst all the lost ones, longing to relive an old memory, a past time, in a city that’s moved on without them. The ones who recognise theirs and their friends’ adulthood but refuse to partake in it. Reluctantly they accept that they don’t have a place at this new table.
It’s the first day of a new school.
Endnotes
The Amit Chaudhuri book is one of the most beautiful publications I have picked in the last so many years. Canvas bound beige with a montage of the sea as seen from Apollo Bunder (I believe) in the pink dusk of the city. The book is an object and compliments the beautiful prose of Chaudhuri. Here he is reading from it -
I am not sure how, but my mind is filled with pictures by Joel Meyerowitz. I suspect his photos is how I picture my memories of friendship, although his world is so far away from mine.
The piece is four year’s old and you might have chanced upon it already, but here’s How to Make Friends as an Adult.
Shotgun Love Songs is perhaps the best book on friendship I read in the last many years. It felt in many ways too personal.
Tolerating Friends on a Cannes Holiday, a short story.