Midget & Me!

At the stroke of 12, the break of my birthday dawn, an “unknown number” flashed on my battery drained cell phone. Ah! Instantly I knew the voice, as a feeble tone wished me for the special day. It was the Midget I knew once! Not very long ago. Shuttling between the dreamy lands of American soil, dancing with German ladies and probably getting stranded in the hot springs of South Korea, Midget- I prefer calling Iggu midget, had been busy globetrotting. I had almost forgotten he existed. Hmmm ‘Forgotten’ is not the word… may be ‘overlooked’. But I knew, when Midget talked to me, he loved talkin to me and I welcomed the call graciously and made no qualms about my non-existence in his life for some time.
The months or life that followed the night conversation broke a dawn of a realization, long hidden amongst my cerebral cells. That night, lil Midget kept rambling that he had no friend to look for when he was wrapped in the loneliness of an alien land. And that he was buried in the assumption that people hate him. “Lil Midget, I blame you”, I said. “Why don’t you fly out of your cocoon and make an effort to keep in touch with people whom you consider friends?” He kept quiet. Midget brushed aside the fact that friends recognize you only when you recognize them. Midget only envied me, saying that I was smothered by the love of umpteen friends! And yeah, I threw the pride on myself, that it is true. “I have soooo many friends and I’m so fortunate to have the best of them”
Lil midget, sorry I told you this. You might have felt so belittled and ignored given your state. But Midget, my iguana pet, read on… read on why I have or rather say maintain so many friends, and you’ll know where you and I stand.
I’m ignorant, reserved and usually lost in my own imaginative world or succumbed to plain emptiness until people come find me as an ‘oh-so-witty’, ‘oor-suthifyin’ girl. And that’s when people take me to be a friend. Owing to my true self, they still know that I have a head like a polished chair! Don’t take me to be bald, Midget. Folks find a comfortable pose and sit right there. Yes, on my head! They know, lil midget, that they can sit tightly on top there, they know I’ll bear the weight, they know I can take their farts, they know I won’t whine when they poke me with their cowboy boots, and I will still be there to stick a hankie up on their face when I see them cry.
I’ve been thru a phase like “Oh, you’re not my friend, you jus come along for lunch break”, thru a phase where I had a gang of friends for a school excursion and none realized that I was totally sick and had no energy to take another step for site-seeing, thru a phase where ‘friends’ didn’t realize I can be good enough to get a 100 in the math paper. I’ve heard “Cha, you wouldn’t have got, stop lying”, thru a phase where I heard a friend behind my back declaring “I have never seen such a person who didn’t stand for a friend” obviously indicating me, when I tried to protect her from a rogue whom she ticked off with her haughty behavior. I’ve been thru a phase when a friend showed her middle finger and said ‘Jus, for the fun of it’, thru a phase where a friend raised her brow and gave a demeaning look for fish-knows-what reason!, thru a phase where I wait with a growling stomach to have lunch with a friend caught up in work and the next day I dint see them waiting for me wen I was late! I’ve been thru a phase when friends adore their newly found mates and where I only have been insulted for not bonding with them. I’ve been thru a phase where friends give room for misconceptions and find jus another reason to condemn you as though a grave crime was committed, thru a phase where friends do not trust you, thru a phase where none of my friends could read behind my glistening eyes that I had been in a depressed phase.
Too sensitive I am, all this pricks and pokes me. Then, lil Midget, you might as well want to slap me hard across my face and say “Then get the fish out of all this!!” I say that to myself too, dear iguana. I wish I could stop crooning. But, you know, that I was raised in believing people and that no matter what, friends are not worth the anger, the hatred, the loss!
Amongst all these pricks and pokes, dear Midget…. I only remember friends who dint abandon me in the school excursion, the 2 friends who shared a 2-seater couch with me in the theatre, the friends who shut my mouth when I was talkin ill of the auto driver who would have probably bashed me otherwise, the friends who told me “Don’t keep that long face….that is so not you”, the friends who rightly pop up to take me for an ice-cream when they know when I’m coffined in my 3 ft cubicle, the friends who held my head while crying, the friends who mopped and drained my vomit, the friends who hit the shit out of me when I went bonkers, the friends who wanted me to get me back on my feet, the friends who called up after I revealed a secret and said “Nish.. dunno wat to say, But we love you!”, the friends who re-assured that I’m worth more and lastly the friend jus last night dropped a msg “I know you’re already snorin to glory…but Goodnight Nish!” My daddy gave me the sweetest name ever - NISHA! But my friends.. my friends christened me with names as Nishi, Nishesh, Nizammuddin, Vayaapuri, Jackie, Ajit Agarkar, Lizzy, Gundu, etc etc. It makes me special!
Don’t you see dear lil Midget….that friends are there ever! Probably they weren’t there at the right time to see sadness in my eyes… I wouldn’t have been either. Probably they wouldn’t have been in the right spirits to accept a folly I had made…. I wouldn’t have been either. Probably they would have been succumbed to misunderstandings… I would have been too. So are they drumming about complaining? Probably yes…. I might have been doing that too. But through all this, I accept my friends and will stand for them, as they would for me(Or even if they dont!)!*
And that is why my puny indecisive pet Midget…..they say; you lose some to gain more!! 

*Conditions apply – ‘Without losing my self-respect’

Fade Away!

Hazy sky, smoky clouds
Crystal clear faces
All beholds.

Seen places, longing emotions
Takes up paces
A story unfolds.

Ha! a movie
I wish, a fantasy.
A climatic treachery
Thrown at, in mockery.

A creepy lot
I pick you from,
With wretched plot
Another one.

In my head
A seeming mound,
An inception dread
Again around.

Oh, ugly dream!
Fade away.
Lure back in my stream,
Only as a fairy tale.