Friendship Day: The Art Of Letting Building Friends Go

A heartfelt Friendship Day tribute about the bittersweet art of letting building friends go and why the people who grew up with us never really leave us.

There are friends you make because life brings you together. And then there are friends who become part of the place you call home.

Mine lived across my building.

Long before our lives became calendars, deadlines and WhatsApp reminders, our days revolved around one thing -- 5 pm. The minute homework was done, we'd run downstairs because that's where life happened.

We didn't grow up with iPads or YouTube. We grew up with scraped knees, cricket bats that had seen better days, games of chor-police, endless rounds of hide-and-seek and our mothers calling our names from the balcony when it was time to go back home.

IMAGE: Raj, Eshita, Rishika and Krushant. All photographs: Rishika Shah/Rediff

Back then, our gang was bigger. Seven or eight of us, all different ages, somehow existing as one unit. Some of them eventually moved away. Some left for college. Some drifted apart because growing up sometimes means growing in different directions.

But somehow, four of us remained -- Eshita, Raj, Krushant and me -- our Geeta Bhavan (that's the name of our building) gang.

Raj taught me how to hold a cricket bat properly, never mind the fact that I usually missed the ball anyway.

Eshita, though two years younger than me, somehow always knew when to become the older sister I didn't know I needed.

And Krushant? We probably mastered the art of childhood friendship breakups before we even knew that term existed. We'd fight, stop speaking, swear we'd never talk again, only to find ourselves back downstairs the next evening because, honestly, what was childhood without each other?

That's the thing about building friends. You don't consciously choose them. Life does. And because your lives are so deeply intertwined, you somehow always find your way back.

I never imagined there would come a day when we wouldn't all live within shouting distance.

For years, if I looked out of my bedroom window, I'd almost always spot either Eshita or Raj standing in theirs. It became such a normal part of life that I never questioned it. They were just... there. It was constant, familiar and felt like home.

Maybe that's why growing up catches you off guard.

I moved out to start a new chapter with my fiance. Eshita and Raj moved homes. Krushant is planning to leave for higher studies. Raj might too.

For the first time, it hit me that our childhood had quietly packed its bags before any of us were ready.

What's strange, though, is that distance hasn't changed us.

I've have friends from school, college and work. People I've known for years whose priorities shifted, whose personalities evolved, whose lives naturally moved in different directions. That's what adulthood does.

But my building friends feel like they've found a loophole in time.

They may have changed for the rest of the world. They've grown into different people with different responsibilities and different dreams. Yet somehow, whenever the four of us are together, we're still those children arguing over whose turn it is to bat, teasing each other mercilessly and picking up conversations exactly where we left them, even if weeks have passed.

We don't have to pretend to be who we've become.

We simply get to be who we've always been.

Maybe that's why building friendships are different. They're built before ambition, before social media, before careers and carefully curated versions of ourselves. They know the version of you with missing teeth, uneven haircuts, dramatic tears over silly fights and impossible dreams.

They know the version of you that existed before the world told you who you should become.

No matter how many friendships life gives me, a part of my heart will always belong to Geeta Bhavan.

To the windows we looked out of, to the evenings we thought would last forever, and to the people who unknowingly became my first definition of family beyond family.

Growing up has taught me that not everyone stays. But building friends don't really leave. Sometimes they just stop living across your window.

The windows that once framed our childhood may now overlook different streets. The evenings we thought would last forever have given way to jobs, cities and lives of our own. Yet every time we're together, time quietly folds in on itself and we're children again.

Maybe that's what letting building friends go really means. You don't let go of the friendship. You let go of the version of life where everyone lived just one doorbell away.

And perhaps that's the hardest part of growing up -- accepting that home isn't always a place you can return to. Sometimes, it's simply the people you're lucky enough to take with you.