Soul sisters...

We went to the same school and often shared the same sections. We remained classmates for almost 10 years. In junior school, she was amongst the top rank-holders and that was a rock-solid reason for staying away. As a little girl, I believed that people who came first second or third were boring people and avoided them like I avoid early mornings, vegetarian food and Facebook game-requests.

It was in the year 2000 that a miracle happened. A unicorn jumped over a rainbow, a fairy swirled her magic wand and we started chatting in the library (which had a big “Silence” board). We instantly became friends. (Ok, I made up the unicorn and the fairy part.)

I was overwhelmed by her wit and intelligence. She had the most amazing sense of humour I had ever come across. I still say this because in all these 13 years she has untiringly found all my wisecracks funny and erm, wise.

I excitedly told Ma one day, “Anwesha and I have become very good friends.” Ma panicked. “You’ve made friendship with Anwesha?”. In my defence, I declared that she was well behaved and sufficiently good in studies. Ma exclaimed, “I know she’s a nice girl. That’s exactly why I am worried about her.”   *jaw-dropping silence*

“Sharing the same section” turned into sharing the best and the most important things in life (barring boyfriends/husbands, of course). We shared interesting content of lunch-boxes, shared answers during exams (mostly leading to disastrous results for both), our ‘his’-stories and their geographies, the crush list (which was and still is as long as the river Nile), our clothes, dreams, maths problems…and thousands of Facebook and non-Facebook pictures.

She is the best woman I chose for myself in these 29 years. She is the solace of ice-golas on power-barren afternoons, the yolk of a poached egg, the imli-chutni in the bhelpuri, bubble-wraps, the happiness of weight-loss, one of the foremost things I want to carry if marooned in a deserted island, the feeling of milk powder clinging to the corner-most teeth….hard to get rid off and enjoyable till the last bit.  She is the one that makes my life heaven; she is the one I want to go to hell with.

Why she? I have tried to excavate answers like archeologists. The only reason I could find is: She makes me happy. Simple. She is a part of a big warm pool of memories I have stored at the back of my mind. On lazy days, we dip our toes in it, make tiny paper boats by folding our souls and sail them…

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The memories: Bunking Maths classes in school as a matter of birth right (FYI: Bunking classes in our school was next to impossible….as impossible as believing Shakti Kapoor and Shraddha Kapoor are father and daughter), wedding-crashing, doing shameless things in Kolkata’s biggest mall under strict CC-TV surveillance, forcing strangers to click our photos and not letting them go until they have produced “slender-arms-no-double-chin-flat-stomach” results, co-authoring extraordinary stories which the then-leading English daily refused to publish, giving each other random words every now and then and encouraging each other to write, sharing the best conversations in the world from books, movies, men, biriyani joints, weight-loss tips, recipes, bosses, pennilessness, Raghu Ram, Arjun Rampal (yes, we agreed in unison that if either of us were Maya in Inkaar, we would have NEVER EVER lodged a complaint), status messages, husbands, other people’s husbands…oh, it’s a long list. I read somewhere that printing your Chat histories, making a booklet out of it and gifting it to your best friend is a great idea. But then, I didn’t want to put Mahabharata to shame. I also spared a forest full of trees.

We talk every day. My husband often asks if I have saved a guy’s number with the name “Anwesha”. “You laugh like a school girl when you are talking to her”, he says. My anti-ageing cream, she is.

PS: In all these years, we have only fought once or twice. Barring the Jai-Veeru love, the other reason being, we can’t afford to miss the fun for too long.

Ms. A, this is my Friendship Day-cum-your Birthday present. (A blank cheque would suffice as a return gift, thank you).

I am also sharing our favourite ‘just-the-two-of-us’ picture. Here's to the 13 years of being 16!

Footnote : The Truth ~ “God made us best friends because he knew our parents couldn’t handle us as sisters.”

This post is written for the Soul Sisters contest hosted by Women's Web. 
(http://www.womensweb.in/articles/soul-sisters-friendship-day-contest/)

And, I won!!

You can read all the other posts for this contest here.