SYLVESTER

‘Can you lend me some money?’

‘For your booze?’ I looked straight to Sylvester.

‘Not exactly.’ Sylvester offered an instant guilty smile to me. ‘My son’s school fees are pending for last couple of months. He might have to leave his studies if I can’t clear them right now.’

Genuine and equally sensitive issue indeed for borrowing money! At least for a jobless father! A careless father as well!

Sylvester was our childhood friend. He was pathetic at studies but generous in treating his friends. He had introduced us to various food-corners and restaurants of Vasco and kept on stimulating our taste-buds in frequent intervals. The flow of his pocket money was always steady and stout from a pampering businessman father that brought regular peace to our greedy stomachs. The uncontrolled generosity of a literally spoilt child in slow run brought tragic end to a roaring family business.

 When we grew up and started earning Sylvester’s story became a perfect ‘riches to rags’.

He was married by that time fathering three children. And there was his compulsory boozing habit.

It was no indifferent story from many who were the pampered lot of the affluent families and finally broken down by inevitable financial disasters. Very few could reverse the situation.

Sylvester didn’t possess the ability to reverse the tide of fortune in his favour. He always remained a complete loser in life.

He never stopped begging to his friends. He thought that’s the way life can be lived.

Most of our school friends were settled outside Goa. A few of us were still dumped here. We kept the internal communication viable within our small circle of friends. We were hardcore middle-class people with many unfulfilled dreams. Our incomes were limited and so were our savings. We remained compulsorily concerned about our children and families. Sons’ education, girls’ marriages, parents’ treatment cost and savings for old age were the constant sources our awful irritation.

Sylvester’s non-stop borrowing habits only added fuel to our growing frustrations of life. 

‘Friendship is much more than money.’ He said every time to his resentful money-lenders after grabbing the loan amount that he had never repaid so far.

‘Friendship is much more than money!’

Sylvester was no more a friend to us but an obnoxious burden in the name of a friend.

We had nothing left for him in our mind except strong repulsion. Funnily we couldn’t get rid of him either. Saying ‘no’ to him was a difficult option for us. As if he took us for granted.

Childhood memories created the key hindrances as they were linked directly to the ‘middle-class’ softness of gratitude.

Gratitude is an unhealed disease of the wearisome middle-class people.

 

Meanwhile a sudden, unexpected deluge stormed in our low-tide, banal life. We were clueless and didn’t know the way to get out of the crisis.

Hari was a good friend of our group and once a promising footballer of our school, He had managed a job in Panaji Municipal Corporation for his sporting skill but slowly got drifted from the game following a traditional, middle-class mind-set.

We, middle-class people, after all live and die for our jobs.

Hari had recently fathered his second child, a baby girl. Our friend and his wife were terribly happy. They were yearning for a girl after their elder son.

Middle-class people had plethora of wishes. Very few of them see the light of fulfilment.

Hari threw a big party on the occasion of his daughter’s birth.

Sylvester fell in obvious list of his non-invited.

We had a gala time with delicious food and freaked out on expensive foreign liquor. Later on, after coming back home we couldn’t stop sharing our envious surprises with each other on Hari’s lavish spending after the party.

‘He lives on a handful of bribes being a municipality worker,’ was our united and agreed conclusion.

When the same Hari rushed to us and asked financial help for a complicated cardiac operation that his newly born daughter had urgently needed to bridge a small gap in her tiny heart we just fell from the sky.

The amount was exorbitant. Ten hundred thousand rupees. Enough to halt our breath for a moment.

‘I couldn’t manage it Boss.’ Hari’s tearful eyes and chocking voice stopped our heart. ‘Even selling my small property in Vasco and lifting money from provident fund fall short. The operation must take place now. Otherwise my daughter won’t survive.’ His rapid breaking down with flooding of tears shook every inch of our soul.

Children are so valuable in our lives. We live for them. We earn for them. We die for them.

But the intentions of the middle-class people like us to help during an unprecedented monetary crisis of a near dear one are often obscured by stronger sense of insecurity. If I help others with my hard-earned money is there a guarantee that someone else will support me in the similar fashion at the time of my emergency?

Our limited financial support which was rendered after a minute, narrow-ended calculation didn’t reach near the actual requirement. Hari became almost mad. From early morning till late hours of night the poor guy kept on knocking all known and unknown doors for money. The date of operation was getting delayed.

We were only in the position to shower our sympathies on him though we knew it well that mere sympathies can’t save a small, little girl’s life who was yet to see the cream of life.

 

But miracle still happens.

And miracle happened.

 

One bright morning we came to know that Hari’s daughter was successfully operated last night to rectify the defect in her heart. The child was safe and showing good improvement.

We had a sigh of relief.

Thanks God!

There had been a growing guilt feeling clouding our mind that we couldn’t stand by our friend during his crisis the way we should have been.

God saved us from an embarrassing situation. If something grave happened to the child we couldn’t show our faces to our friend.

The next question that peeped in our highly inquisitive, middle-class mind was how the miracle had happened.

 

Sylvester!

He suddenly came to the limelight of the entire story where he had never been before.

Hari told us that Sylvester sold one of his kidneys to bear the rest of the expenditure of his daughter’s operation.

We were overwhelmed. We were equally feeling quite a bit uncomfortable.

How could it be Sylvester? The worthless penniless drunkard who was living his life on our compassionate pocket money!

The same Sylvester!

We would have never been so much uneasy had it been somebody else. How come Sylvester! He has no right to belittle us like this.

Bloody Sylvester!

 

‘Go and meet him in the hospital.’ Hari said to us in an unusual tearful eyes.

 

We had never met him in his place for years since we had left the school, since he had turned into rags from riches. We had never lifted him from the street and brought back home when he was lying there drunk and unconscious for days and nights. We had only cursed him when he time to time poked us for money. We were only tolerating him because he was a fabulous host to us in the school days.

The same Sylvester!

 

Still we came to the hospital to give him almost a forced, unwilling visit. His shrunken, emaciated face brightened the moment he saw us. ‘Hey guys, what a pleasant surprise!’ He said in a meek, feeble but warm voice. The glimpse of a splendid host of many years old hit back for a moment.

His broken wife and lean and thin children were present beside his bed with faces sunk in unfathomable worries.

We didn’t know what to tell them following the tradition of consolation.

‘See these people!’ Sylvester mocked at his family funnily. ‘They are unnecessarily worrying for me. I told them so many times that a person can very well live with one kidney. And you are all there to help them if something happens to me. They don’t believe me. Stupid people!’

One of us finally asked him what we all were dying to ask.

‘Why did you do all these, Sylvester?’

He gave us an adorable, pampering smile and said what he kept on telling us every time he took money from us. ‘Friendship is much more than money.’

He then added one more line to it. ‘A kidney is nothing in terms of saving the only daughter of a dear friend.’

 

We didn’t know where to hide our awful, obnoxious and shameless faces this time.        

 

Reviews

[Coyote Poetry]

A wonderful story shared dear friend. Interesting characters and I like liked the story line. I did like the logical ending. Somethings are worth a life. Thank you for sharing the amazing story.
Coyote

[Leslie Philibert]

I`m not a great reviewer of fiction, due to lack of time, but a brief scan proves this is well written !