fights between friends

there are those friends that are no different from ourselves - we love them as much as we love ourselves and then there are those that we keep fighting with all the time. some of these friends who bear the brunt of violence (aka 'stupidity') go on to become remarkable friends later on. a prime example comes to mind - shanks. we started on a war footing. about the 7th standard, when the hormonal glands wake up and start wondering which way to grow and slowly start sending out their buds of growth, we were fighting on the way back from school - hiding behind bushes, inside abandoned wells and behind the walls of temples waiting for the other to pass by. ambush is what it was. i was tiny, thin, made a tough target to hit and i could shift my positions quickly. he was fat and strong making for a powerful cannon with an enormous reach - so large that sometimes after firing his round, our stomachs would cramp because an innocent cyclist would have ventured into the battlefield! stones and special sticks were our weapons of choice although we later improvised our weaponry to include compasses and dividers for short range attack and he moved on to dusters with accurate target hitting capabilities. psychological warfare was also used. i would pummel him on his 'unpatriotic' support for the australian cricket team while he would destroy me for being a class leader that was partial to friends. lunch hours were invariably spent fighting with dusters. it was like a wild west shootout with him and i throwing stuff at each other from both ends of the class. benches were used to garrison our places. surprise attacks were made on each other's territories. many a time, there were other guys in the war too. this made for great entertainment for the spectators(and of course made us popular with girls ;-)). soon enough, we made a pact and followed a no-first-attack policy for psychological attacks. but the physical violence continued.

its been 14 years and now we are the best of friends. but there have been those painful exceptions. a few with whom the fights degenerated and resulted in relationships which are not a fraction of what they used to be. the heart remembers them once in a while and cries tears of debt for all the good times past and that wont be. i only wish i dont loose any more of them like this. but who can stop a pendulum from moving to and fro?