War Stories

During our morning jog, these past couple of days I have noticed my friend frequently reminiscing about his college days. He starts innocuously enough about what fun those days were and how that was one of the best period of his life, the reminiscing slowly progresses into the category of what I call 'war strories'.  War stories, according to me, are the stories about how you did something that seemed improbable, totally crazy illegal and probably what you would call “Fuck ass insane”.

I would like to say here that, my friend is in his early twenties, not usually the age for such nostalgia, and we  jog in and around the campus of his alma matter. As we go round our jogging route, my friend points out the spots where he beat a guy black and blue because he messed up with a friend of his; the spot he shared his first kiss with a girl,; and so on the remembering goes on and he falls into a monotone about how much he was respected, feared almost 'bhai like', how he fixed admissions, got people fired from jobs,  made money doing it, so and so forth.

Currently he is in a weird position in his life, his dream career has not taken off, his father has almost forced him to work in the family business and his friends view him with slight contempt, or so he believes. This got me wondering behind the reasons for his constant stream of the same war stories. Is it the place being his his alma matter or is it his mental state considering how he believes to be perceived today.  

Maybe, we all have been there at one time or another, when we visit our school or sit down with old friends. Remembering those incidents help us by giving us strength and maybe restoring our self belief and confidence when we are down. No matter the cause which brings forth such nostalgia,  we all need, at such times, a friend who listens to the same stories again and again and is there to support us.