Delhi's gift to me

"Baawara mann dekhne chala ek sapna

Baawre se mann ki dekho

Baawari hain baatein

Baawari si dhadkhane hain

Baawari hain saasein

Baawari si karwaton Se,

Nindiya door bhaage

Baaware se nain chaahe,

Baaware jharokhon se,

Baawre nazaron ko takna. Baawara mann dekhne chala ek sapna"

Swanand Kirkire

Hazaaron Khwaishen Aisi

As you grow older and older, you find yourself wondering, who your friends are. This thought occurred to me again in January when I was away on an offsite in a place called Desert Trails 50 kms from Jaipur. Sitting under the open sky, with a bonfire before me and nothing but wilderness and the vastness of the desert around me, I started evaluating my life, my job, my friends. And when I started counting my friends, I was fortunate to find more than one "best friend". In different walks and phases of life, like you meet people and make friends, I make a best friend. This post is about one of them. Our stories, jokes, memories in virtual ink. There will be more posts, with more best friends. After all, what is life, without memories,good, bad and ugly with people you love.

The first of these was H. I joined Sanskriti, in New Delhi in the 11th standard and i owe a lot of who I am to that school. In the orientation session, all new joinees were taken for a school tour by the older students. H was a part of this gang and I instantly warmed to her. We are different in a thousand ways and similar in a million. her subjects in school were different, her subjects in college were different, but our lives, our stories, our likes, dislikes, loves have been very similar. We can not talk for months together and still connect in a jiffy when we meet again. Our phone conversations last for hours and we talk about politics, bollywood, education, parents, relationships etc etc. We laugh for nothing at all and we laugh on the stupidest of things. We have crazy stories right from school to the last time I met her. There was one, where we had a crazy teacher in class 12th, and we were freaking out because the boards were right there and we hadn't done anything at all! So we complained against her (in secret) to our class teacher and she got pulled up for it. That teacher then came to the class and said "some people from this class have complained about my teaching". H and I were sweating and holding each others hands under the desk, avoiding the teacher's eye. I so clearly remember that day. There was one time when Omar Abdullah was visiting school and both of us ran to the front gate to catch a glimpse of him. There was this other day when both of us and some of our other friends went to watch Main Hoon Na in PVR Priya and then went to have lunch in Yo! China, and ended up paying in 50 paise coins with the manager standing right next to us. We went to different colleges, but she knew everyone in my class and I knew everyone in hers. Oh there was this one time when both of us had this subject in the 2nd year: Logic. I had Logic A and she had Logic B, we kept discussing our problems and our subject until the day before the final exam! Only then did we realise that we actually had two different subjects! We once went back to school library with this other very dear friend of ours and found a history book that we had issued, both our names were there on the slip, we made fun of the librarian, whom we called Hippo. We sat on those tiny tables we used to sit on when we were in school, and tried to imitate Hippo when she called out "Children! Please keep silence", and we wanted to laugh so badly at this, that all three of us sat under the table and laughed, holding our stomachs.

H and i went for Chak De together and watched it in PVR Plaza in Connaught Place, we screamed at Shahrukh's first shot and last. We whistled and clapped, with people around us thinking we were crazy. We have gone to jewelry shops (the high-end ones) and pretended that one of us was getting married and needed to look for an engagement ring. We have done the same thing in some other stores as well and never showed our faces there again! Our history project in school was Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar and we sat up the night before it, getting info from Google and preparing our presentation. We were still better off than the (only) three boys in our class who impromptu presented on Raja Ram Mohan Roy and claimed that he fought alongside Gandhi Ji in the Freedom Struggle.

There was this one time when she visited Hyderabad and I introduced her to the guy I liked. And the week before she was visiting, we planned on how to ask the guy, what to text him, how to invite for lunch/dinner and in spite of all our planning we ended up sending something like this "Hey X! my best friend is visiting Hyderabad, and I would like her to meet you" Only after sending it did we realize how stupid it sounded! Well he said yes for a lunch. That night, we both decided that it was "good" to send a text to him, and we did. And both of us stared at the phone waiting for a reply. I had to go to the loo and wouldn't get up thinking I might miss the text! And then she said to me "it will come as soon as you get up" I got up and the phone buzzed, I jumped at it and she jumped on me and we rolled and laughter!

She is absolutely like me, a die-hard bollywood fan, loves to read, loves history, loves food, travelling, goes crazy and laughs without reason. I sometimes have to discuss things with her to be at peace and she does the same. We love our school and our parents. We love to shop and then convince our mothers how its worth every penny. We see absolute sense in nonsense. We have stayed up talking on the phone all night. No one but us understands our "sense of humour". Our emails to each other are in English but we will be talking in Hindi. Our mothers hate it. We decide our passwords together and they are absolutely crazy. Our dream (and it will be reality one day) is to open a chain of bookstores across the country, a unique one. Inshallah we will soon start our first one! Speaking of bookstores, we once went to Om Bookstores in Delhi, it was on sale and we sat there reading "Still Reading Khan" by Mushtaq Sheikh and we read it completely and were mesmerized, turning page over page of Shah's life. That is where i think we decided to open our own bookstore where we can sit and read for free!

We love to bitch and we love Milind Soman! There was this one time, my farewell lunch, when I was leaving Delhi, H and I with two of our other very close friends met at Flavors. We were sitting on the same side and the two guys on the opposite side of the table. Milind Soman was in a photo shoot outside in the lawns, jumping and his hair was bouncing, and it's Milind Soman! Throughout lunch we just stared at Milind to the utter disgust of the two guys!

Today, we do not talk everyday, and don't necessarily tell each other everything, but we end up knowing exactly how the other is feeling when we meet or talk. Sometimes, only we can calm each other, nothing or no one else matters. I can trust her with my life. I know, tomorrow irrespective of what happens, I will always find H standing right next to me. She will be there with me when I am right, and she will be there with me when I am wrong. She will wait for me to figure out myself that I was wrong, and at the end of it all, she will says, "Good you did what you did, what's life if we do not learn by making mistakes." I learnt from her the philosophy of never having regrets in life. She truly is Delhi's gift to me

How will you know who she is? Well, when we are famous, H and I will be invited to Koffee with Karan, you'll see us there! (Hello! that wasn't a joke, we really plan on getting there!)

I can hear the music and Karan saying "They are crazy, they are beautiful, but they are the minds behind the biggest book store business in the country today, please welcome....."

"Baaware se is jahan mein

Baawara ek saath ho Is sayani bheed mein bas

Haathon mein tera haath ho Baawari Si dhun ho koi,

Baawara ek raag ho Baawari si dhun ho koi,

Baawara ek raag ho Baaware se pair chahen, baavron tarano ke,

Baaware se bol pe thirakna.

Baawara mann, dekhne chala ek sapna"