For Akash

I didn't want to put words like "goodbye" or "farewell" in the subject of this post. Because I strongly believe that friends move away from you only geographically. And geographical distances are immaterial when you have a heart-to-heart connection.

One of my dearest friends at work, Akash, left today. I cannot actually come up with a better post on this subject than this one, but here are some random thoughts, incidents, and memories.

I will definitely miss Akash saying "Good Morning" in his typical style every morning. I will also miss having someone around who calls me over to his cubicle to show me a random video exactly when it is time for me to go home. If not that, he'll ask me to take him out to eat momos or hot chocolate fudge or something of the sort at precisely that time.

Akash was one colleague I have bothered any number of times when I've been feeling low, confused, sad, ill, or simply feeling like taking a little break from work. It was during those moments that I actually watched the random videos he liked showing me.

And yes, I will also miss the cribbing and the whining. I can almost hear him say, "hadh badtameezi hai yaar!" or complain about Abhinav going to the market and not getting momos for him.

Oh, and we made a collage of our pictures for Akash's farewell gift. It turned out to be quite lovely. We had a lot of fun putting it all together. We went through hundreds of pictures from various trips, football matches, birthday treats... After shortlisting about fifty pictures, which was already a pretty large number, I was about to start putting them together, when I suddenly remembered that Akash also went to Dalhousie with us and there were about five hundred pictures from that trip too. After doing it all up, Bhatti suddenly chipped in with a fresh batch of amazing pictures. And after I managed to add those, Namrata suddenly chipped in with a fresh batch of amazing pictures.

Then there was a particular picture that Sandy wanted us to include. We asked him to mail it to "all of us." He mailed it to all of us. Including Akash. With "Candidate For Collage" in the subject line. I will never forget Namrata's reaction to that. She was the last person who was expected to say, "Sandy gadha hai!"

There was also something completely idiotic that I did last weekend. I thought it would be a good idea to include snapshots from Akash's post on friends in the collage. I looked around a little on my laptop's keyboard, and then called Abhinav and told him that I wanted snapshots of that blog post and couldn't get them because there was no Print Screen key on our laptops. He told me he wasn't home, and would call me back when he got there. In the half hour that it took Abhinav took to call me back, I did see that the Print Screen key was right there, in plain sight, next to the power button. Eventually I did not use those snapshots.

I will miss having a friend who always finds a way to irritate me when I am feeling good, and a way to make me smile when I am feeling low. Bhatti has actually promised Akash that he will now make it a point to cause me all the irritation, agitation, and frustration that he used to cause, along with all the irritation, agitation, and frustration that Bhatti himself causes. Which means that, instead of just trying to scare my kangaroo, Bhatti will also come up with new, weird names for him. Bhatti will also try his toes on my laptop's fingerprint reader and make snide remarks about everything I wear to work. But who is going to take me out for hot chocolate fudge? And I hope Akash is still going to keep our commitment towards commenting on each other's blogs...

I'm really going to miss seeing you every day dear. Wish you all the very best, whatever you do, wherever you go. Love you.