Ben:My Bestie

2#One Summer Vacation

The story changed when my summer vacation of 2015 commenced.
I hurriedly packed my things and waved off, from my boarding school .
Along the road I tried to imagine, trying to remember my picnic plans ,study routines and meeting Ben.
On reaching the city ,I have to take another ride lasting for a night to reach my lovely village.
That night I struggled in my rotten seat .By dawn,I found myself alive and reached my place but not without bumped head and a blistered knee.
Till today,that night of hopeless struggle told me how a simple individual who don't own an automobile or an environment polluter, simply suffer in a public transport.
As I reached home ,I was welcomed by my lovely smiling parents but something was missing and I was searching for it in vain.

After sometime, as I sit relaxed to take the chicken soup .
Mom told "John your friend is ill and bedridden for a long time.
Why don't you go and see him"?

I ran to his house and found him by the chair so still, lonely and all alone.
His thin back back facing towards the window and his bony face looking out of the bamboo window.

"Oink..is that him" I froze and stood there ,hardly unable to utter a word. But at last I gathered up my courage.
"Aye,fallen sick"? I lied ,knowing that he was already too sick.
He turned around slowly ;my heart throbbed to see his unrecognisable face,sunken eyes,and his adventurous strength dying to skin and bones.
OMG ..!
He looked at my face like I was a total stranger but after a long silence.
"I thought I will never see you again..John .. and I haven't fallen sick... but just fallen to another struggle of life, to find happiness and peace forever with death or to live a life of another immortal story of survival " He remarked coolly ..

I was sad inside but I burst out laughing and said "My friend ,don't talk like an old man"
I guess you better live,because I want to see the blessings of your old age -black hair turning to white ..".

And we talk and talked about the last Christmas camping and that biting cold water💦,where I threw the fishing net down the running water and caught some freshwater fishes.🐟🐠
His past stories of lost romance with a girl, who died so suddenly unknowingly suggested me his state of additional loneliness and sadness with his sickness.
I have no doubt, that he was suffering from some kind of dreaded disease and he cursed himself of colic,appetite loss,headache,fever etc.

The next cloudy and foggy morning ,I suggested his parents to act immediately by taking him to a nearby hospital but they turned a deaf ear to my perhaps childish advises and they silently blamed their financial state and also said even if they do ,they feared he will be suggested to another bigger and better equipped hospital :which they can't afford .
So they kept him under the excuse of superstitious beliefs and waited for a miracle.

I never gave up and told his mom to sit and tend him during the silent hours of daytime but again the very traits of agricultural practices and habits ,overcome the love and caring part of their son to greed and worries of sowing,weeding in the heart of summer.
So ironically ,all of his family disappeared to fields everyday.

Lastly ,I tried and told my dad to manage him to a nearby hospital but his silence told me,what I already knew i .e my family too was struggling to pay debt after debt and investments were proving unfruitful. ..
And..