What is your definition of a best friend?

Bhavana Shivashankar
5 min readJun 8, 2019

I cannot remember the last time I was such genuinely happy. It was maybe one of those days spent along the beachside of Kovalam, Kerala. After a 10-minute bargain with the owner of a lovely speeding motorboat, we took a ride through the devilishly strong gushing waters. With strong waves hitting the boat, we crossed a nice big lighthouse that stood high above the ground like a gigantic postbox. Just like the lighthouse gave hopes to a hundred sailors guiding them back home, the postbox would hold in itself a hundred letters encapsulating a million memories that held the magic to bring home the dear ones strengthening their bond with nothing but mere words, just like the light was to sailors.

As the gentle breeze carried the fragrance of the mud and played with my strands of hair, I vividly remember walking along the seashore watching little kids build sandcastles with a smile so contagious that it made their mothers sit and watch them in amaze. Nature offers a wide range of beautiful surprises and the best one among them are the “sunsets”. I sat there for an hour or so with no thought crossing my mind, no watch to measure the time, no smartphone to upload pictures on social media, it was just me, the soothing sound of sea waves and the sun sinking down the horizon bringing the promise of a new dawn.

This is by far the clearest and most vivid memory I have completely enjoyed and immersed myself amidst the indescribable beauty of nature.

And today the multitude of happiness I enjoyed was not one grain lesser. But this time I was sitting comfortably on the small teak wood couch with bronze colored cover giving it a tint of antiqueness.

To my left was my best friend and to my right was his brother. Isn’t it ironic that we travel the world and spend bundles of notes to gain that momentary joy which is akin to the warmest feeling experienced by sitting next to your loved ones and munching on a small packet of orange Lays?

I’m guessing you’d be imagining us as those best friends who spend hours on phone every day and make the first wish to each other as they blow candles on birthdays and New Year’s Eve.

Who wouldn’t? The definition of best friend says “the very special people in one’s life who are the first people you think about when making plans, first people on the dial list to talk about everything and nothing, they are your shoulder to cry on the worst of days and would take a bullet any day of the year”.

The last time I’d met my best friend was four years ago before I left for college a thousand miles away from home. With such fewer means of communication back in those times, we were so busy trying to adapt to new places, new friends that we hardly made phone calls once every few months or so, but the love we had for each other never faded. Years passed and we started studying in different universities under different states. It was 7th June 2019 and I was home for my final summer vacation, I got a text saying “exams done? Are you home? If it’s a ‘yes’, then you’re coming to my home this weekend and no excuses”. Giving a small background introduction of myself, I come from a typical south Indian middle-class family with a strict mom and a stricter dad. After hours of compelling and asking, my mom finally said “yes”. I could not sleep the whole night. I’ve never been so excited to meet anyone ever. It seemed like the sun took forever to rise that day and I was up wide awake before anyone else which is a rarity as I’m usually the last one to wake up. I’ve been tagged as the night owl in the family.

I looked at the clock every couple minute until finally, it was 3 p.m. I wore my usual white shirt paired with blue jeans and the 5-year-old Sparx which is still big for my little feet. Being the devil I always was from childhood, I texted him to look outside his main door a few minutes before I’d reached his place. The prank was so real that he opened the door a minute late after I reached the doorsteps in real.

He was now 6 feet tall and wore a large yellow tee that would fit two of my size, huge black spectacles from playing those long hours of video games, but what remained unchanged were those innocent pair of eyes that clearly promised me I was still his best friend. A kid with the same pair of eyes would exchange lunch with me when I was in kindergarten, the kid who would always grab my hand first, winning us the first prize in every running race I ran in school, the boy who was my greatest competitor whenever the math quiz between girls and boys would get hot, the guy who filled the first page of my slam and had left the first page of his blank until the last day at school for me to fill it amongst the hundreds of friends he had in school.

It just took minutes to recreate the spark we had years ago. We talked about how things had changed drastically concerning friends, studies, future-plans and our very little lives. Life wasn’t a fairytale and we were no more kids who dashed out of the class lightning fast as soon as the iron bell struck the first time. We were fully grown individuals about to make some of the hardest choices of life that would mold and shape our future akin to how a potter’s wheel gives the raw clay an alluring shape. But no matter how curvy the road would get, the warmth in our friendship which has managed to stay the same even after years of separation gave me the inner voice that I might just do it all fine one more time.

This was one of the best evenings I’ve ever had with memories worth a forever. I’ve realized that the definition of a best friend is hugely subjective. I’d say a best friend is a person so special that they need not exist as a picture in our every trip album but always remain in that small corner of the heart reserved for them which is just irreplaceable, it isn’t someone who helps you in making a choice but the one who supports you no matter what you choose in all right ways, it isn’t someone who’s always available for a 3 A.M call, but it is that one smiling face that first hits your mind every time the song ‘You can count on me’ by Bruno Mars plays on the radio”.

This is my best friend. How do you define yours?

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Bhavana Shivashankar

A 25-year-old tech enthusiast | Dreams of chasing demons with Indiana Jones and dad | Never turns back during the short sprint from the bathroom to bedroom