The Arduous Journey Of Forgiveness

By Harshita Tanwar

There was nothing unusual about this evening. Except this. Waking up to 42 missed calls from my classmates.

I can never forget that date - 28th January 2011. It started as a usual day. There was some festival being celebrated at our college so we all gathered there to enjoy the delicacies. The only thing that was unusual was that I was not talking to my best friend - Sambit.

We started off as best friends right from day-1 of our college. We would talk endlessly, go everywhere together, make fun of people, study, basically everything best friends do, including fighting. He had been quite an annoying kid but still my best friend. So we would fight a lot but still somehow make up for the fight. Almost a year of pure blissful friendship. I had never had the experience of having a truly amazing friend before him, so he turned out to be my soul dependency.

But recently, there had been a lot of changes in his behavior. He had started spending too much money buying all unnecessary things, getting all stupid tattoos on his navel, getting ear pierced and stuff. He was even planning to get a bike for himself. This sudden increased expenditure did ring a bell in my mind. I had asked him quite a few times where he is getting all the money to spend so much from. He somehow convinced me every time into believing that his parents are spending all they are earning on him, him being their only child.

On 25th Jan, we had this huge fight where he shouted at me for asking him too many questions and accused me of being jealous of him because I was unable to match his financial level. He shouted "Get out of here, you poor stupid girl!!" in front of everyone in a famous coffee shop where we fought over buying the most expensive, waste-of-money coffee - for eight people! This was too much for me to bear and I walked out of there crying my eyes out and swore never to speak to him ever again.

26th Jan - No sign of him calling me to say sorry or talk at least if not sorry. I am not too good at staying mad at someone for too long. I eventually forget. But he didn't. And that broke me.

27th Jan evening - Casual SMS from him as if nothing happened. This made me even more furious. But I had somewhat forgotten but not forgiven. 2 calls but I ignored. Better not to talk to someone when you are mad at him instead of abusing.

28th Jan Morning in college - I got busy with my classmates in the celebrations. But my eyes were still searching for him. He came, called me to a side, tried to talk to me, said sorry for whatever he said and wanted to talk about something but I started accusing him of insulting me and not respecting me enough. And I asked him to go to hell. But I swear to God, I had thought I would throw tantrums for a few more hours and meet him in the evening and get things back to normal.

At noon I headed back home and as usual kept my phone in my bag and fell asleep. Woke up in the evening to 42 missed calls. Casually dialed the number of a classmate(A) and the conversation went like -

Me - "Hello, you called?"

A - "Yeah. What happened to Sambit?"

Me - "What happened? (casual)"

A - "You don't know?"

Me - "No (a bit worried)"

A - "He committed suicide at his room at 4 PM"

The world literally went black in front of my eyes. I couldn't just bear what my ears had just made me listen to. Somehow gathered courage and rushed to the boys' hostel which was quite near to my residence.

Found his dead body still hanging to the ceiling fan with the rope I had given him some time back to hang his wet clothes on. His tongue out of his mouth and his eyes wide open - they seemed like looking at me and saying "So finally you came!".

This was the most horrifying thing I had ever seen in my life.

The coming days were the worst I had ever spent. I could not bring myself to the fact that he is no more. He went away, with our fight unresolved, with me being the nasty selfish bitch, with all our memories, with his plea to talk to him once, with his sorry. He went away.

Turned out later that he had gotten into some bad company with people and got into a debt of around 1.5 lakhs which he had to pay back by the end of that fateful day which he couldn't and succumbed to death.

I could not forgive myself for years to come. For not talking to him that day. For throwing way too many tantrums. For not forgiving him. For accusing him instead of asking him what is wrong with him. For not melting by that puppy look on his face as always. For throwing away his hand when he tried to drag me to talk to him. For not being a friend good enough for him to share his biggest problem with me. For not having that one last conversation. For having his poor helpless parents cry tears of blood losing their only beloved young child. For letting my jovial best friend go through something as dreadful as suicide.

I don't know if that last conversation would have done any good to change what had happened. But still I cannot bring myself to the fact that it might NOT have as well.

Sambit - This name still brings tears of regret into my eyes. But somehow I had to forgive myself, or living with that huge burden of guilt in my heart would have made me succumb to something similar.

I am still in the process of forgiving myself. The journey is an arduous one. And it's the hardest thing I had, am, or will ever go through.

By Harshita Tanwar