My friend Dubey!

ये बात बहुत पुरानी यादों की है जब मैं college में पढ़ता था। a friend from those days called today to wish us a very happy Diwali. As we chatted happily about those wonderful bygone years, he mentioned the name of another dear friend, Dubey whom I had neither met or spoken to for more than last fifty years. I learnt that he lives in Indore, a city in MP. He was doing well with his family, children and grandchildren. I asked for his phone number which this friend gave me and I just could not wait to call him!

To give you some idea of my friendship with Dubey, let me admit that he, myself and one more guy formed a sort of troika given to the addiction of missing class of one particularly boring professor. (As if others were not!) We and the professor simply riled each other for no particular reason. So, as soon as his class used to start after the due attendance call, we will sneak out from the rear. You see, we took care of sitting in the last row, close to the getaway stairs! And the best part was that the sporting professor knew about this;after the attendance, he will often murmur, 'Dubey to dubega, Rajput ko bhi le kar dubega'!

More about Dubey! He was simply crazy about getting himself photographed. In those days, I had the privilege of owning a small brownie camera which took those now forgotten black and white film rolls. If we wanted Dubey to do something for us, we simply bribed him with a promise of clicking his picture. For this, we could ask him to take any pose, even the most ridiculous! And he will oblige only after quickly combing his luxurious hair for which he had a small pocket comb always handy in his back pocket. He used to be such a simple guy, never doubting that we sometimes made fun of him behind his back!

Dubey was such a soft spoken person, he never picked up even a moderate discussion about anything. He was the least aggressive in our group. He always carried that trademark side hanging bag commonly carried by many students. We made use of his bag while going to the town, for keeping our small things as if it was common property. But he never minded!

All these memories came flooding back to my mind as I started dialling his number. As he answered and asked as to who was calling, I told him that it was one of his very old friends. When he asked me to give my name, I in turn asked him to make three guesses of his very close, old friends from college days. He waited for a few seconds and then said, 'is it Basant Kumar Rajput?'! Need I say that he made my day!