A midnight call from my friend

It was late in the evening when I shut down my system and began to find my way to the lobby for the cab and reached home. The day as such was tough. In the morning, I had missed my office bus and had to travel by the public bus, which was suffocating to say the least. Over that, my boss, as usual, was demanding and courteous.

After reaching home, I grabbed a quick dinner and hit the TV remote. The channels had nothing to offer but the same breaking news, sobbing families, unfaithful spouses, dangling sensex, etc. I just decided to put myself and the TV to sleep mode.

Never realized when I went into a deep sleep mode until I was awoken by a ring tone. First I thought it was the backup music of a BPO vehicle, later realized that it was too close to me and right in my ear. I woke up and noticed that time was 12:05 am and there were 3 missed calls.

Before I could unlock the keypad, the phone rang again. It was from my friend, I was wondering, why would he call me up in the middle of the night and answered “Hi, how are you” He replied “Bala, there is something which only I want you do it for me, will you, please promise?’”. I was unaware of what was to come and said “C’mon yaar, aisa bhi kya? In most cases you know I will do what best I can”

He replied “Today is my birthday, I want you to be the first person to wish me” and burst out laughing. Leave alone wishes, I gave him back all the expletives I could recollect. He was just following the tradition we had of calling each other requesting for a birthday wish. It was just that he had pre-poned the timings by a cool six to seven hours. I did give him my heartiest wishes. It was nice to know that the fun and mischievousness in our friendship had not gone even after 2 decades of friendship. I lost my sleep for the night and was left wondering why I did not put my mobile on silent mode that night alone.