After the Great Trust Scare of 2022, our friendship settled into a comfortable, unshakeable rhythm. The incident, paradoxically, had strengthened our bond. We had faced a potential friendship-ending catastrophe—albeit one manufactured by a stupid prank—and survived. It made us feel invincible. The awkwardness of being in different cities faded away, replaced by the familiar warmth of a connection that didn't depend on proximity.
College life chugged along. My days were a montage of grease-stained lab coats, lectures that felt like they were delivered in a foreign language, and the constant, low-grade terror of impending deadlines. Parveen's world was one of circuit diagrams that looked like ancient alien hieroglyphs, coding assignments that made her want to throw her laptop out a window, and the unique social experiment of sharing a small room with two other people.
We were each other's lifeline. She was the first person I'd text when my professor assigned a project so impossible I was convinced it was a human rights violation. I was the one she'd call at midnight, not to talk, but just to have someone on the line while she crammed for an exam, the quiet solidarity a comfort in itself.
Our conversations were a language of their own, a chaotic blend of high-minded debate and absolute nonsense.
"The problem with modern society," I'd begin, pacing my dorm room like a budget philosopher, "is the decay of genuine connection in favor of performative online interaction."
"Dude," she'd reply, her voice muffled as she was likely eating chips. "You just spent an hour watching a video of a cat playing a tiny piano. Get off your high horse."
"It was a commentary on the commodification of art!"
"It was a cat, you weirdo. A fluffy, adorable, talentless cat."
She was my reality check, the anchor that kept my pretentious hot-air balloon of a personality from floating off into the stratosphere. In return, I was her safe space to vent, the one person she could complain to about her overbearing parents or the friend who'd borrowed her favorite hoodie and "forgotten" to return it.
We were more than friends; we were each other's primary witness. We were watching each other grow up, one panicked exam season and questionable life choice at a time. The fourteen kilometers that separated our campuses felt irrelevant. She was a permanent resident in my head, her sarcastic commentary narrating my daily life. I'd trip on a crack in the pavement and could practically hear her voice in my ear saying, "Smooth moves, Casanova."
The end of our second semester approached in May 2023, bringing with it the annual academic apocalypse known as end-of-term exams. The pressure mounted. Sleep became a theoretical concept. Coffee became a food group. Our texts became more frantic, a flurry of shared notes, panicked questions, and memes about the sweet release of death.
One night, I was staring at a page of differential equations, my brain feeling like a scrambled egg. It was nearly 2 AM. I was exhausted, stressed, and on the verge of giving up and accepting my new life as a professional goat herder. My phone buzzed. It was a picture from her. She had drawn a cartoon version of my face on a potato and was holding it up next to her textbook.
The caption read: "Look, it's you. Also a potato. Equally useful for this exam."
I burst out laughing, the sound echoing in my silent room. The stress melted away, just for a moment. I sent back a picture of a dustbin. "Found your family portrait."
Her reply was instant. "Rude. But accurate."
That was us. Simple. Stupid. Uncomplicated. We were an object in motion, staying in motion. The momentum felt permanent. The friendship felt like a law of nature. And as every student of science knows, the most dangerous thing you can do is take a law for granted.
It was the day before my Mathematics-II exam. My room was a disaster zone, littered with textbooks, crumpled notes, and the empty husks of several instant noodle cups. My brain was a swamp of half-remembered formulas and theorems that all seemed to be mocking me. I had been studying for eight hours straight, and the numbers on the page had started to look like angry hieroglyphs.
I needed a break. A five-minute escape before my brain staged a full-scale rebellion and leaked out of my ears. I picked up my phone, the cool glass a welcome relief. My thumb, acting on muscle memory, went straight to the Instagram icon.
It was a mindless scroll. A dopamine-seeking mission. Memes. Vacation photos of people I barely knew. An ad for a t-shirt with a witty slogan. My brain was in neutral, passively absorbing the digital noise.
And then I saw it.
The video was short, grainy, and profoundly stupid. It featured a lanky guy in clothes that were two sizes too big, dancing in what looked like a public park. His moves were a chaotic mix of flailing limbs and facial expressions that suggested he was being electrocuted. It was mesmerizingly weird.
But it was the audio and the caption that made it. A robotic voiceover declared, "Tag someone who deserves a boyfriend this amazing."
I snorted. It was objectively hilarious. It was the kind of bottom-of-the-barrel, nonsensical internet humor that formed the very foundation of my friendship with Parveen. It was a weapon-grade stupid joke. It was perfect.
Without a single, solitary moment of critical thought, my thumb moved to the tag button. Her username was the first to pop up. I clicked it. I hit send. I added it to my story for good measure, just to make sure she saw it.
In my head, the sequence of events was already playing out. She'd see it. She'd send back a string of laughing emojis, followed by a creative insult questioning my parentage. Maybe she'd retaliate with an even more unhinged meme. It was a familiar script, a game we'd played a thousand times. It was our language.
I put my phone down, a small smile on my face. The five-minute break was over. My brain felt marginally less swampy. I turned back to my textbook, the image of the dancing weirdo fading as I tried to force the concept of Laplace transforms back into my head.
The tag was a pebble dropped into a pond. A tiny, insignificant act. I didn't know it at the time, but I hadn't just dropped a pebble. I had dropped a live grenade into the heart of our friendship, and I had just walked away, whistling, completely oblivious to the impending explosion.
An hour passed. I was deep in the mathematical trenches, wrestling with a particularly nasty integration problem, when my phone started vibrating against the table. It wasn't a single buzz. It was a frantic, continuous series of vibrations, like an angry hornet was trapped inside the case.
I glanced at the screen. A wall of notifications from her. My first thought was that she must have really loved the reel.
My second thought, as I read the first message, was that I was catastrophically, apocalyptically wrong.
The first message was just my name, followed by seven question marks. Parveen: Arjun???????
The second was more direct. Parveen: What the hell is that?
I was confused. I typed back, still in study-mode. Me: The reel? It's hilarious right?
The reply was instant. Parveen: NO IT IS NOT HILARIOUS. WHY WOULD YOU TAG ME IN THAT?
The use of all caps was the first red flag. Parveen was the queen of lowercase. All caps was reserved for life-or-death situations, like the finale of a TV show or the discovery of a really good biryani place.
Me: It's a joke? Like the ones we always send?Parveen: THIS IS NOT A JOKE. THIS IS HUMILIATING.Parveen: Do you really think that's what I deserve?
The question threw me. It was so far from my intention that it felt like it was written in another language. I was trying to make her laugh. She was acting like I had just insulted her entire lineage.
Me: What? No! It's just a stupid video of a weirdo dancing! It's ironic!Parveen: I don't find it ironic. I find it offensive.Parveen: After everything I tell you, about everything I have to deal with, you think THIS is funny?
My confusion was rapidly curdling into a defensive frustration. I had no idea what she was talking about. "Everything she had to deal with?" We were both stressed about exams. What did that have to in with a dumb reel?
I tried to apologize, to de-escalate. Me: Look, I'm sorry. I obviously read this wrong. I didn't mean to offend you. I just thought it was funny.
My apology was a lit match tossed into a puddle of gasoline.
Parveen: You "didn't mean to." That's what you always say.Parveen: You don't think. You just do things and expect me to be okay with it.
And then came the killing blow. A message that reached back in time, grabbed the memory of our last misunderstanding, and weaponized it.
Parveen: You know, I was actually joking last time when I said I don't trust you. And now, I'm beginning to think maybe I wasn't joking.
The words hit me with physical force. My breath hitched. This wasn't about a reel anymore. This was about us. She was taking a silly, thoughtless mistake and reframing it as a pattern of disrespect, a fundamental flaw in my character.
Before I could even type a response, the final messages came through.
Parveen: I'm done.Parveen: Don't talk to me again.
And then, silence.
I stared at the screen, at the conversation history that had just gone from a friendly chat to a car wreck in the span of five minutes. I tried to type her name, but the message wouldn't send. A small, gray notification appeared at the bottom of the screen. I couldn't see her profile picture anymore.
She had blocked me.
I sat there, in the quiet of my room, the textbook open in front of me. The differential equations, the Laplace transforms, the entire world of mathematics had ceased to exist. There was only the bright screen of my phone, the brutal finality of her words, and a cold, hollowing dread spreading through my chest.
It was just a stupid joke.
But it had just cost me my best friend.