Those early friendships

Sue's post on her son and his little friend has inspired me to write a post of my own. I am blessed with decent memory so I have fairly vivid memories of some of my kindergarten friendships. For some reason, in those days, I mostly hung out with the boys at school. So here's remembering Abhishek, Arvind and Shammi.

So first there was Abhishek. Having both just moved to Delhi from Tamil Nadu at five, we were practically inseparable and happily chatted away in Tamil all day long while our teacher unsuccessfully tried to get us to interact with the other kids who mostly spoke Hindi/English. This continued until our teacher and parents conspired to tear us apart and put us in different sections lest we turn into some kind of social rejects. Heartbreaking, really.

Then came Arvind. Arvind was the sweetest guy and we got along really well. Until he lost bladder control in class one day, that is. After that incident, he was constantly the butt of everybody's jokes and I was too embarrassed to hang out with him. So that's how poor Arvind got dumped. Some of us have to learn the harsh ways of the world sooner than others, I guess.

Then came Shammi Kapoor. No his name wasn't really Shammi Kapoor (Bollywood star), but I remember him as such because he was Shammi's most ardent fan if there ever was one. Now Shammi, for some unfathomable reason, imagined that he had found a most captivated audience in me for his Chitrahaar song-and-dance performances. So each morning, Shammi and his devoted mother would hunt the school grounds and would not rest until they had found me. Mommy dear would then leave contented for the day. Shammi was like krazy-glue. Once spotted, it was impossible to get rid of him, or to make him stop "electric-shock dancing" (Shammi Kapoor's signature dancing style). I can still recall his chahe koi mujhe junglee kahe moves.

There were others too, but these are are the most memorable and perhaps also the quirkiest.

This one is for the girls

Butterfly, T, M and I

Meeting M in California this past weekend has made me very nostalgic. This June, it will be 10 years since M, T, Butterfly and I first met. Anyone who knows us well would never say that we are much alike. We have very different personalities, ideas and points-of-view. However, something did draw us together from the moment we met. I can't quite put my finger on what it was, but it may have been our mutual acceptance and admiration of the strong and opinionated individuals that we are, and the fact that we somehow always "get" each other. Well, it's either that, or nobody else wanted to be friends with us!

I was just thinking the other day that I never really shared my first impressions with them. So here they are, for my own benefit as much as theirs. I want to hold on to these memories, and what better way to preserve them than in my blog?

I first met M during our college admissions/counseling. She was so at ease in her new surroundings and seemed so very independent, that I couldn't help but admire her self-confidence. In sharp contrast, I was demure and quiet and thought I had just entered prison and not college. She was the first person that I spoke to.

I was introduced to Butterfly by M. Two things I instantly noticed about her - I had never met a girl with such pretty dimples, or who spoke her mind as openly. Within minutes she had me scandalized. I clearly remember thinking that this girl is trouble!

T and I first met when I had managed to sneak away from college seniors during ragging/hazing, and she was sent into the girls' hostel to call me out. I remember thinking what a beauty! And how come she's not frazzled by all this ragging business? In return, she tells me that I was a real wuss for hiding in my room! T, always the honest and practical one.

Four years with each other have lead to a lot of fond memories. Here are a few in no particular order (except for the first; that one's my favorite!):

• Butterfly and T fighting like wild cats over petty stuff during lunch and dinner in the cafeteria/mess, while M and I goaded them on and enjoyed the show. Don't judge. The food was awful. Entertainment was all we had!
• Late-night meetings in Butterfly's room for yet another discussion on boys, love, relationships and gossip.
• Butterfly's iron-clad rule - Thou must wash thy feet before sitting on my bed. T always walked in with dirty socks and refused to comply (more drama!).
• Trying on Butterfly's unused outfits from her secret "clothes stash" before every college event, and telling each other how great we looked! (I must mention this. Those clothes remained stashed for all 4 years, since Butterfly had a pathological fear of having to wash/iron them after use. She was already spending a fair bit of her expensive college education just washing clothes...If it's not clear, Butterfly has OCD.)
  
• Staying up all night to cram for end-sem exams, and eventually ending up in T's room an hour before for a crash-course. T was always prepared - a week in advance. God, we hated her!
• Butterfly claiming that T's methods are always wrong but somehow her "output" is always correct, as soon as the crash course had been delivered. (This would lead to some trouble, but the cycle would faithfully repeat itself every semester).
• Mustering up every ounce of self-control to avoid cracking up at Butterfly's jokes in class (Networks, in particular. I may have suffered from internal bleeding in that one.)
• Long walks with M, and how we never ran out of things to talk about.
• T's horoscopic troubles, ineffective crash-diets and her firm belief that what you eat off of someone else's plate doesn't count.
  
• That first bottle of vodka.
• Watching M unleash her ruthless sarcasm on people.
• Butterfly trying all sorts of well-intended but downright obvious tricks to help set me up with a cute guy (who I later married).
• Sharing our anxiety over grad school apps and where life was going to take us next.
• Butterfly waking up one morning before college was coming to an end and anxiously banging on my door because she dreamt that we were all gone :(

This is one long post, and god knows it could've been longer, and perhaps better. I'm not sure I did justice to this recap of our time together. I'm just paranoid that these memories will start slipping away (Except for those of the many practical jokes we played on T, of course. Those cannot be forgotten and even her grand-kids will hear about them from me). But the comforting thing is that we continue to be be best friends and any doubts that I may have had, when we graduated almost 6 years ago, about staying in touch are long gone.