Back in the day, when I used to take Nostradamus seriously and when my notebooks had to have brown covers and flowery, pointless name stickers, I also used to have a friend whose curious character has prevented his memories from being lost in the bottomless pit that is my recollections. Named Farahan, he was curious enough to not have very many friends but not curious enough to not have me as one. I have often gravitated towards those who in their shy, stupid, awkward ways served to provide a little color to an otherwise browned out melancholic background of perfectly raised, cleanly dressed, yes boys. Farahan seemed to have a betting syndrome, if whatever he had can be called that. We were probably 12 years old so it's not that he would don a black jacket, red tie, twinkling leather shoes, and with a cigar in his mouth, usher into the local casinos to the swooning hearts of the fairer sex, open up his briefcase and stake it all on the whims of the rolling dice and the fancies of the shuffled deck. No, I wouldn't say that he had a betting syndrome in that respect. He just liked the plain vanilla flavor of a simple bet. He never had any money so his bets would always be of the form, 'If A happens I win, if not then you'. Very curious at the beginning, I used to ask him,
'What?'
'What!?,' he used to reply with increasing mistrust.
'What would I win?'
At this point he would look at me with the suspicion of someone who suspects his friend of having an affair with his wife, fumble for an answer, and finally finding none, would move on to other topics. And we would drift off in myriad directions, talking about things that 12 year olds who are neither the disheveled backbenchers, nor the bright handraisers talk about, looking out of the window to see the senior class playing and running on the dusty playground below with folks falling down like shooting stars on a night sky - quite randomly but almost periodically. And a voice, lost in the freedom, would quietly say,
'If that guy on that swing falls, I win, else you.'
I would look at him and with half a mind of repeating my desire to know the precise terms and conditions, almost utter that fateful 'What?.' In due course of time I stopped asking him such difficult questions and let him bet on everything from dog fights to the contents of his lunchbox and the boy who would be the first to lower his arms when the class was made to raise hands. Ever the shrewd businessman, he didn't let a single opportunity slip. The world and its complicated entrails reduced to an efficient set of solutions A and B when he glowered upon them with his penetrating vision. And he would win if the result was A and I would win if it was B. Of course, he never won anything and I never lost anything. People kept falling from swings and ants kept getting confused, teachers kept missing classes and they kept being on time, that girl kept having a red ribbon except when she did not have one, my notebooks kept lasting longer than his except when he would tear away one too many of those middle 2 pages, and he kept winning except when I did not lose.