Cloud 9 Minus One

It is eight in the morning and the phone rings just once before it is picked up by may father’s ready and waiting hand. For every day, for the past seven years, the phone has rung like this every single day at eight in the morning. Uncle Ram is on the other side. He has been Papa’s closest friend for the past sixty years. Seven years ago, he thought his life had ended when my parents declared their intention of moving to Mumbai from Delhi. Uncle Ram was heartbroken. He had nobody else to turn to now.
My friend’s father is seventy eight years old, and behaves like he is seventeen. In 1948, his friends and he, all refugees from Peshawar, started meeting every day from twelve to one. There were eighteen of them. Today there are eight, the rest having died, and they still meet at Embassy restaurant for coffee. They all have arthritis, and hypertension and weak hearts and all the other irritants that nature inflicts upon the human body, but they would rather die than move away from this ritual of meeting up every day.
Spouses separate, siblings fight, children abandon parents. What is it about friendship that prevents us from breaking up? We fight, we argue, we move away and don’t meet for years together, we follow our own belief systems, we get entangled with our own families, and then our children’s families, and still we come together as though separation is not within the scope of our imagination.
Friends are what make us happy like nothing else in this world.