The Girl in the Blue Polka dotted dress

No, this is not a lesbian post, Sadly, my life is not that exciting.


The first time, I met her, It was in a dilapidated pigeon-shit infested corridor of my school. She was the new girl, I was rotting there since the time I could utter m-aa (It was like my parents were waiting for that fateful day when I could utter one more syllable, and they just threw me out of the house!). We were in the fourth standard, and in walks this girl, wearing light blue polka dotted dividers (A sub-junior fashion rage back in my day, nothing but a short jumpsuit, now don't ask me what a jumpsuit is). It was lunch hour, she was standing there looking bloody clueless, like she'd entered an alien world. I went up to her and said a hello, a normal kiddie one. Thankfully, there was no need to ask if she had a facebook or an google plus or a linkedin profile (The day is not far when a fourth grader has to create a linkedin profile, connections, you know, they are all that matter), Life was much simpler then.

Time went on, we became friends. I don't remember much what we used to do back then, maybe share some chocolates; though I distinctly remember that she was Kanjoos (I know she calls me that, actually both of us are kanjoos). We used to trade in feathers, my class kids, I don't know now for what comprehendible reason we used to do it, but there we were, a bunch of ten year olds trading feathers as if they were some high yield bonds and we were all Wall Street investment bankers. The bushiest feathers had the highest demand. You may wonder how we could get so many feathers, were we little brats going all around the neighbourhood, and defeathering all the innocent birds? No, we were not that perverted. We used to buy "feather hats", in some fairs or exhibitions (I’ll ignore the fact that the hat seller also must’ve defeathered some birds, it’ll become too tragic), carefully remove all the feathers and store it in our books. Anyway, this post is not about "How to successfully start a feather trading business", so let me get back to what I was saying. We were peacefully going about with our business, and guess what this girl does? She ruined feather trading!, One fine day she brings a sticker book. We felt so inferior, like we were some village girls trading some downtrodden stuff, feathers, ugh, so disgusting! We found a new trade, stickers! And this girl, she was the Rauf Lala of the sticker trade. None of us had them anyway. She traded me one 10 mm*10 mm size sticker for 10 of my bushiest feathers. Didn't I mention kanjoos somewhere :P
That was in fourth standard. In the same class, she once hit me for asking if her dog was dead, since she hadn't spoken about it for a while. I can never forget it. I was just trying to clear a doubt. Is it my fault?

Anyway, soon after that, we would face the biggest challenge of our friendship. I gave her the biggest dhokha a eleven year old can ever give. There was a class trip and I told her that I was going. My dad took us on an impromptu pilgrimage on the same day (it is our family fun destination). I was too young to realise the consequences of this fateful act. Our friendship went for a toss. Till date, she explains her situation like she was some Nirupa Roy and I was her son who turned bad, She says,” I was sitting there in the first row. I "caught" a seat next to me for you. I was waiting so eagerly with stars in my eyes, thinking you'll come, you'll definitely come, but Alas! I heard the bus start. You never came!” The trip was for half a day, and definitely not so senti. Anyway, she made a bunch of irritating friends in that stupid trip, I’ll call them “hands”, Why? This irritating group had a friendship code, where ever they went, they had to hold hands and go. So imagine, five little girls, they hold each other's hands and walk along the entire width of the road. Can you imagine it? It was very irritating, and I think she was pissed off with me for that big dhokha and she preferred the sweaty warmth of those five hands to my enriching friendship. At the same time, even I made my own group of forgettable friends. Three years, we didn't speak to each other. It was full blown revenge, very angry little children we were.

Then came highschool, we were forced to talk to each other since they’d split up our class and none of the irritating hands, or the forgettable friends were in our class. Destiny played a guest appearance in our lives and we were back together. This is the time, we realised that we both shared the same unrealistic dreams. We both wanted to run away to Bombay and make a movie. We both wanted it. The astonishing part is not the common dream but the common knowledge that we were talking crap and we'd continue it anyway, what we didn't know was, we'll be doing it a decade later too. Till date, whenever we talk, and that is at least once in three days, we make improbable plans, some of them are idiotic, some of them bordering on lunacy and some realistic, but we both know we'll never do them. It’s a kind of entertainment for us. The only thing that we've ever done till now successfully is our Eurotrip, and even that was scarily screwed up till the very end. Before we left, we were fighting like crazy, we wondered whether we'll make it without killing each other, but apparently it was not so.

Our conversations went like this,

"It’s cold outside. Lets skip taking a bath" (We took bath once in two days)
"This food smells shitty, lets have ice cream" (We ended up eating ice cream everyday for lunch)
"We'll buy this" (We both did the same shopping because we didn't want any major money calculations, we are engineers but that doesn't mean we are good at math, yes, go ahead and roll your eyes :) )

The compatibility was almost comical. And since it worked out so well, we decided to start a business of our own after coming back. It’s been almost a year since we returned and every time we speak, we make a new business plan. Maybe it'll take off, maybe it won’t, but making plans is our addiction.

In these fourteen years, we've done many crazy things together, jumped stands during a cricket match acting like we were being harassed in the gallery stand, watched two movies in one ticket, we've watched XMen 2 thinking that they were playing Bhooth in the theatre, we've gone seeking jobs in a TV station only to run away from there, ended up in Kerala at 1:00 AM in the night with no plan, slept in a german railway station, acted like we didn't know english when a french woman tried to admonish us for some reason which didn't make much sense, danced drunk on a chair singing "Happy birthday to me" and much much more shit, that I cannot think of now, but never have we cried to each other, never have we shared our deepest secrets or fears, yet I know she's my best friend.

Why did I write this?

Just to say this to the girl who entered law college and ended up doing engineering, who won first place in a local skating competition because there were no competitors(Can you believe it?!), who applied to New York film school all the while knowing that she'll join an IT company(That was an ROFL moment :D), who convinced me to ask for a lift in Silk board, who used to ask people in college, "Who's your boyfriend? What’s your story? Why did you break up?" without thinking twice and with a twinkle in her eye, who asked me what people do with a sponge boob in Amsterdam, whose marks I've always compared mine with and said, "Thu, what the hell? How did you get more than me?”, who is my gossip partner, without whom my life would've been boring as hell, To the girl in the blue polka dotted dress,

I can’t afford a gift for your wedding. I hope you understand :D

And ya, Wish you a very very Happy Married Life!

Enjoy :)

PS: She'll read this post and say, "Loose neen esht dhod Kanjoos!"

Next week's my best friend's wedding, and unlike the movie, I'm not trying to sabotage the wedding. I just wanted to write a special post for her, reminiscing all the crap we have done over the last 14 years I have known her.