A Friend Remembered... Happy Friendship's Day
Hi… I am Ayaan. Some lessons we learn in school stay with us long after we've forgotten the textbooks. One of them was a simple sentence. "A friend in need is a friend indeed." As a child, I thought I understood exactly what it meant. Years later, I realized I had only understood half of it. Since today is Friendship Day, let me take you back to one ordinary afternoon in school. Our Hindi teacher had given us an assignment two days earlier. We had to write an essay titled " बाढ़ पीड़ित की आत्मकथा " — The Autobiography of a Flood Victim. Like most children, we waited until the last possible moment. It was lunch break when one of my closest friends walked up to me with his notebook. "Ayaan, can you help me?" I sat beside him and completely forgot my own assignment. I gave him every idea that came to mind — how the essay should begin, what emotions it should carry, what the flood victim would have seen and lost and felt, and how...
