Free will is an illusion

Everyone has the choice when it comes to friendship. Or so we think

Rousseau said, “Man is born free but everywhere he is in chains”. Many of us may agree with the thinker over the limited choices we have in our ‘free lives’. Even the companionship of people who we spend our entire lives with are not choices that we make. Our parents, siblings and sometimes even our spouses, are choices that have already been made. However, everyone has the liberty to exercise choice when it comes to friendship. This could be a reason why friendship is valued sometimes even more than romantic love.

I had befriended Salma when I was only five years old. Living in an adjoining house, Khalil Chacha, was an ironsmith who had three children, the youngest of the lot and the only girl was Salma. My mother and Salma’s mother were best friends. Our fathers, though, were only confined to the exchange of daily pleasantries.

The paucity of vacant hours did not just allow them to forge the bonds of close friendships. The women, however, after finishing their domestic chores, would have their assembly under a dense shady tree in our courtyard. This was when Salma and I would play and have fun.

On the occasions of Diwali and Holi, Salma would stay at our home. While giving us money for crackers and colours, my father would ensure that Salma too received her equal share. Similarly on Eid, Khalil Chacha would give me my Eidi. When we were admitted to the same school on the same day and put in the same class, our friendship grew even stronger. We were together almost on all days. In that time, I had no idea that I was Hindu, and Salma, a Muslim.

Slowly the winds began to take an enigmatic turn. Salma gradually stopped coming to our home after school for our regular play time. Perhaps like me, she too had no inkling that we were not ‘supposed’ to be together. I insisted to go to Salma’s home on the occasion of Eid to get my Eidi, on one particular day. My mother had to lock me inside the room when she failed to convince me that Salma and her family would soon go to their own country because they were Muslims.

The thought of separating with my best friend broke my little heart into countless pieces. I could not eat for days. During the dark days of Partition, the kids were kept under house arrest. After the blood bath ceased (of which I learned later in the books of history) Salma and her family were long gone. I do not know if Salma is alive today or not, but she was my best friend in my childhood.

I often regret why I was born a Hindu and not a Muslim, or why she was born a Muslim, not a Hindu. Had we all been only humans— not Hindus and Muslim— we would not have parted the way we had.