Thankfully, these kids didn’t have a problem having a conversation with me and I remember spending that P.E. period learning all about my classmates, school politics and every “taboo” thing I’d been doing for the past two weeks as a new kid. We talked about the social circles in the school. At that point, it looked like the two girls were really close friends and probably part of the same clique, because of how comfortable they looked, sitting there together. They even told me that they were close friends, but I was quick to notice a faint look of reproach in Janani’s eyes, and that's when I knew then that there was more to what I was hearing than what met the eye.

I was right, because later I found out that Janani was one of the outcasts in our grade and Vencia was just one of her very few close acquaintances. You could call her a friend, but it was nowhere near a real “close-friendship”.

Vencia on one hand ,was a small, average-looking, average-habit cheerful girl. She had her own circle of friends and had pretty much secured her comfort zone, a girl who probably didn’t have much to worry about.

Janini on the other, was a girl you hardly ever expect to see. Janani was tall and slightly burly. Her hair was long and greasy (with traditional coconut oil) and she wore two long pigtails that were folded and tied up with ribbons, they way it’s done traditionally in south Indian villages by young schoolgirls. Her face was tired and blemished and her expression was permanently twisted into a morose frown. Her eyes looked pained, her shoulders were constantly hunched and she always chose a secluded place to sit, tired of being treated so differently all the time. Talking to her, I found that that she wasn’t as backward as she looked. Though she wasn’t exactly someone who was “globally cultured” and though she wasn’t all that in par with the teen lifestyle, she seemed to know a lot. To be honest, all of this was pretty cool to me, and since everything and everyone in India was so different to me anyway, I didn’t have any reason to find repulsion in Janani’s unique style.

As the year went on, I slowly began to settle down, make new friends and even find my own little “clan” to hang out with. On the occasion, when the seating arrangements were changed, or during our break, I got a chance to talk to Janani and she told me all about her family and her life. She was just so different from the other people I talked to; she would talk about things that were completely out of the ordinary or way too uncool for anybody else to even think about. That didn’t bother me; in fact I was actually keen on talking about deeper, stranger topics, that were different from the usual mundane gossip. We talked about everything from culture to education to politics. Janani was interested in Hindu mythology, and I sat through a whole period listening to her tell me about the Hindu Ramayana, and other little stories that came from the Indian past. Out-of-the-blue she’d ask me strange questions, like why people get into relationships. She told me she just couldn’t relate and we spent hours discussing and ranting about our views on relationships and love and I can even remember people turning back and throwing us mocking looks, or just shaking their heads like we were from another planet. I really didn’t mind, I found it quite fun. I found Janani really deep and mature. She was strong, and serious and she always kept her anger bottled up. At the same time, she was never afraid to stand up and let someone know about her injustice. Even if it was a teacher or a grown-up, she was brave enough to get up and oppose. And her “anger” was a lot worse, a lot more meaningful than the anger that most of us experience.

I didn’t always get in touch with Janani, it was just those days when I saw her sitting by herself, I always made it a point to say hi and talk to her. I always went up to her and gave her a hug, by which she was always so taken aback. At times, Janani would bring out her dark side, and she often told me about how she’d never really had any close friends. There were two girls in our class that she hung out with sometimes, but she told me how she was never actually taken in to their group. She told me that people saw her as arrogant, but that’s not exactly the self-perception I anticipated. Janani was highly dignified and she preferred being secluded to being ridiculed in the process of mingling with people. I never pitied her for the person she was, I only pitied the people who had their heads way too high in the clouds to see and appreciate the person she was. The fact that I made friends with her soon became a standing joke in my own friends’ circle. They’d give me weird looks when I’d talked to her and tell me to help her out saying “Go ask her what she wants, she’s your friend” like I it took a great deal of humility to befriend “someone like that”. People were never mean to her; they just treated her like she was invisible and like talking to her was way beneath their dignity. If you ask me, she was more intelligent than most of the kids in the class and they just had no idea about what they were raising their chins to. If only she had a lighter mind, a less worrisome life and people that actually cared about her and looked up to her, I could swear to you, she’d become someone so amazingly great.

Apart from the fact that she had no true friends, Janani had so much more to deal with in life. She was always given the worst seats in the classroom, she faced partiality with the teachers and she’s even had her own parents insulted in front of the whole classroom. To any passer-by she looked like just another one of those pissed-off moping losers, but I don’t think they would ever understand the pain of being absent from school for a week and not having anyone notice or care. Or how it feels to not go to a field trip (which happens exclusively for ninth grade) because she wouldn’t have any friends to hang out with anyway.

Now, all of that was over a long time ago. Things began to drift apart late in the tenth grade when the revisions and mocks for our board exams started taking over. I hardly ever saw or spoke to Janani after that. The days flew by as we had our revisions and exams followed by our summer vacations. Now, just a week ago, the new academic year started and so did my eleventh year of school. When I walked into campus on the first day, the first person I spotted was Vencia- the same girl who I found sitting with Janani back in the ninth grade P.E. class and we sat together in the morning assembly. After the assembly and the speeches were over, one of my friends in the row in front of me turned around and asked me jokingly why I wasn’t talking to any of the new kids the way I made friends with people like Janani (She was one of my friends who sat next to her in class during the last term). That’s when it struck us that we hadn’t seen Janani yet, we had no idea which course and which subjects she’d opted for or even if she was staying in the same school. I turned to Vencia and we both asked her if she knew where Janani had gone and she just shook her head in confusion. That day, I went around asking quite a few people if they had any idea where Janani was, if she had transferred schools and where she’d transferred but every single person I asked shook their heads and told me they didn’t know.

I remembered how my friends threw me a “surprise farewell party” when I was only planning to change schools (and I didn’t btw), and I remembered all those parties, yearbooks, journals, signed shirts, hugs, laughter and tears at the end of the school year for the kids who were leaving school or leaving the city. Now with all of that happening, here was a girl that we all knew, shared our years of school with, some of us who even shared our company and laughter with, and when we weren’t paying attention she walked out our lives in silence. We don’t know where she is, how to contact her, where she’s gone, or even if she’s till alive for that matter. Besides, who cares anyway? She’s just an outcast, right? A social reject.

I once read on a signboard,

“When the entire world seems to be against you, and turns your back against you, turn around ‘cause there will always be someone with open arms still waiting for you.”

There were a very small handful of us who cared about Janani. Maybe it was our job to make her feel loved. Who knows, it could have been any of us. Whenever I think about her, I can’t help feeling this deep ugly pit of guilt in my stomach. Maybe it was I who was meant to be that “someone”, maybe I was the one responsible, maybe I was the one with the job. But among the twists and turns of fate, I was just too caught up. Too caught up with my own life, my own friends and my own petty problems. Maybe I could have made a difference, but the thing is, I didn’t. So here’s my point; I failed miserably at being a good friend.