With A Little Help From My Friends

When I walked into the practice room I was welcomed by smiling faces and applause from my band members. What was missing was a big yellow coloured banner with 'Congratulations' written on it in black letters. "We were waiting for this day from the time you hooked up with her." Akash said, "Your relationship with her was all fire and brimstone, it was so shaky..and anyways, now you will have time to practice again, go wipe the dust from the microphone."

Akash was right, a strange sensation of freedom surged through me. And it was more than two months since I had last practiced, not being a good singer in even the mildest sense of the word, without practice I was horrible. As this thought crept into my mind I asked my friends, "What would you do if I sang out of tune?"

Mathew laughed and asked me, "When do you sing in tune?"

I said, "No, I am serious, what would happen if I sang out of tune, you guys won't walk out on me, would you?"

They debated this thing jocularly amongst themselves and came to the conclusion, "Dude, we would not be the ones walking out. You would be thrown out! And we would make sure you do not have a soft landing."

I laughed and struck a pose, "Friends, Romans, Countrymen, Lend me your ear. I am going to sing you a song," and as an afterthought I added, "and I will try not to sing out of key."

I remembered that it was yesterday while breaking up she had asked me what I was going to do now, I had told her I intended to get by with a little help from my friends. And tonight, I needed to get high.

The practice went considerably well, my throat responded nicely, and we covered a couple of new songs. After practice while I was in a buoyant state of mind, Mathew asked me, "Dude, do you really need somebody?"

I asked him. "Need somebody? For what?"

"Do you need somebody to love?"

I laughed lightly and said, "Not necessarily...but I don't know, not everyone needs someone to love. I guess, I do. Yeah, I need somebody to love?"

He frowned and said, "But could it be ANYBODY? Even her? That bitch, you knew her history, and now you know her future, you spent two months of agony with her, why man?"

I smiled and replied, "Perhaps I wanted somebody to love."

We returned to the hostel, and I walked into my room to see two of my friends already occupying prime positions on my bed. I checked my watch and pointed out the thin one, "It's eight in the evening, what is he doing in the hostel?"

I got the answer in second-hand, "His girl friend is away, she has gone home for the weekend. And all he has done since the evening is sit here and sigh."

Nishit, the thin guy sighed again, to prove Prakash's point, he said, "What do I do when my love is away?"

I asked him, "Does it worry you to be alone? For a single evening?"

He replied, "You don't know how do I feel by the end of the day."

Akash entered the room, having kept his bass guitar and amp in his room, he looked and Nishit and asked a similar question as me, "Hey, are you sad because you are on your own?"

Nishit sprang to his feet and said, "No! I got you guys!"

I mentioned my plan about getting high, Akash said, "We can try, but presently I am hungry."

The four of us went to a decent Chinese restaurant nearby, all through dinner I was the butt of a million relationship related jokes. Prakash, who had had a similar experience a few months ago said, "We can start a club you know. The Broken up club or something."

Akash. the master of tangential thoughts suggested, "Your relationship was like a punch in the face, and your breaking up with her was like losing a tooth. Painful, and perhaps necessary. So name your club 'Broken Tooth', I guess that will fit."

"Broken Tooth!" I said, "What a stupid name!" I was going to further philosophize on the general stupidity of Akash and his ideas when on the next table in front of me I beheld The Most Beautiful Girl in The World. She was wearing a blue dress and eating a starter of some variety.

I kept on staring at her, not realizing that all my friends are going to follow suit, when she started staring back we diligently returned to our table and food. After a while I asked my friends, "Er..do you guys..you know, believe in love at first sight?"

They laughed for the sixtieth time at my expense, and Nishit said, "Yeah I am certain that it happens all the time."

Prakash interjected, "But how do you know if it's love?" And because he didn't like notions of love, he added, "Love is nothing. Nothing is love."

Nishit said, "I have a method, it's fail-proof. All you have to do is close your eyes."

I said, "Can we try it now?" Nishit said, "Sure." After I closed my eyes he asked me, "Now in the complete darkness, as if the lights have been turned off, what is it that you see?"

I saw, quite clearly, the picture of the girl sitting a few feet away, and I told my friends, "I can't tell you right now, but I am sure that it is going to be mine."

It took me a whole minute to realize that I was sitting in relative silence, I opened my eyes to see that my friends had deserted the table, leaving me to become the laughing stock of the restaurant and to pay the bill.


A few days later I got to be introduced with that girl in blue, by chance and random consequence. In conversation, she asked me, "So Ram, what do you do in free time, generally?"

I smiled and said, "I get by with a little help from my friends."