Hasta La Vista Mr. H

The silence enveloped me like icicles in a dark cave. Its thin spikes pricked me, urging me to light a spark to banish the gloom. I cast an eye around me. A man looked fixedly at his palms, another stared blankly out the window while someone else quietly fiddled with the perfectly good fastening of his briefcase. It was one week since Mr. H left.

Things were different then. Mr. H would entertain us with his witty comments and tall stories. Peals of laughter echoed from every corner, conversations never seemed to cease and there was plenty of backslapping. The bus was a shop window adorned with vibrant twinkling lights.

“Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some stay for a while and leave footprints on our hearts. And we are never, ever the same.”-- Anonymous

Mr H is that kind of a person. His random acts of kindness in between jokes were like the soft glow around a flame that gives a lamp its jazz. A man with absolutely no ego, Mr. H is the only person who had the courage to run after me at a busy intersection and strike up a conversation. Others kept saying that he was insane but I knew better. He is just full of life. The only way I can square things up is to be the same caring person to other people.

Good friends are hard to find, harder to leave, and impossible to forget. Mr. H only quit his job to take up another in a different part of the city. Like the others who came in and out of my life, I thought that’s the last I would ever see of him. However, the world is shrinking and I happened to bump into him again at a crossroad swarming with traffic.

Me – “How come you are here? I thought you resigned and left us forever?”

Mr. H – “Not really, I’ll keep coming. I have a lot of work left to do.”

Liar. What could he mean by that? I still like him. I don’t know why and don’t care why. Friendship simply is……



Do you know someone who gave you a different perspective on life that changed you forever?