neil, baby pal

describing him is difficult. i can picture his wavy hair, for one, his small, round eyes, his lopsided smile, and one tooth that lies there, slightly larger than the others. he's tall, which doesn't say much now, but meant a lot when i first set eyes on him one cold morning in 1989.

neil had just moved to our school, and looked tall enough to swallow me and a couple of my friends whole. we didn't mind. he seemed friendly enough, even though he rarely smiled. so, all was well, until this tall, tall boy decided to get on to the athletics team. which is when his height began to be a bit of a problem. he said he was a year older than i was -- and i would dispute it to this day, but he'd beat me up – but, back then, when i was 13, competing against him for a 100-metre sprint was suicide. he would take one step, and i would have to take three to keep up.

long story short -- neil kept winning, we kept losing. neil would cross the finish line at approximately the same time we touched the 50-metre mark. i see now, with hindsight, why i wasn't that popular with the women back then. not that i am now, of course, but that’s another short story.

after we finished with school, neil went on to do a whole lot of things. he tried going to one college, was asked to get out because of his problems with attendance, and moved to another college where few people ever saw him. what he always wanted to do, however, was fly. and no, not in the metaphorical way that half-witted romantic men often whisper to half-witted romantic women (darling, if you were to marry me, all i would want to do is fly away with you in my arms to a quiet mountaintop...) neil wanted to fly, literally. he always wanted to be a pilot, for as long as i can remember. so, he left for america and came back a couple of years later with his licence to do so.

it is an achievement i’m still very proud of, even if it isn’t my own.

it's been around 15 years since we first met, neil and i. we've had our ups and downs (him on top and me down, really. he's still a violent boy). we've laughed at ridiculous things, had enough alcohol together to drown three whole villages, have been caught by cops for doing all kinds of unmentionable things like skinny-dipping (yes, have seen neil without his clothes more than a couple of times between the ages 18 and 21. not a pretty sight), crashed parties by the beach, hit discos around and outside the city, played games revolving around song titles, and managed more things in a decade than most people squeeze into a lifetime.

the thing about neil is that getting to know him takes a while. then, when you know him, you can sit at a table saying nothing, and still manage to connect in some vague manner. people i introduce him to can rarely ever understand him. my friends and i usually can, so we nod sympathetically and tell them that he's just being himself. he, in the meanwhile, continues to sit quietly at the table sipping his rum and coke and nodding to a song playing in his head alone.

there are times, every once in a while, when i love neil tremendously. like on my birthday last year, for instance, when i walked with him from a rented cottage down a long, long road to the pier at marve, at 6 am. i had slept for an hour, after finishing half a bottle of vodka. he hadn’t slept for a minute, after finishing a whole bottle of rum. we were both, strangely enough, coherent enough to manage our usual, vague topics of discussion. at times like these, when he's just being neil, i have always found him to be strangely at peace with himself, contrary to what one would assume if one were to meet him at a crowded party.

my friends and i sometimes worry that he's got a lot on his mind that we can’t help him with, which may well be true. at the same time, i sometimes think he has answers to things i don't even have questions for.

neil has put his plans of flying on hold, for the moment. he is currently a disc jockey at a popular disco in mumbai. i love what he does for a living. i love the fact that he took something we were all passionate about and made it into a viable career for himself. i love the fact that he wakes up every morning safe in the knowledge that music will definitely be a part of his day.

i don't know where neil goes from here. i do know that i really would like to tag along, even if it's three whole steps behind.