Parallel Lives

The stars lean down to kiss you
and i lie awake and miss you
pour me a heavy dose of the atmosphere
'Cuz I will doze off safe and soundly
but I'll miss your arms around  me
I'd send a postcard to you dear
'Cuz I wish you were here.

Vanilla Twilight
Owl City

I've been meaning to write this post for so long, I don't even remember how long. Adithya. My best friend. The one that I share my life with. We have this thing Adi and me, if there's something noteworthy happening in one of our lives, invariably the other will be experiencing the same thing.

I've known him for 10 years now. We met in Sanskriti School in Delhi. Oh the things I owe to that institution. Adithya is definitely one of them. I was in the 11th standard and after a life of studying in Army schools and Kendriya Vidhyalayas, I was finally finishing my schooling with Sanskriti in Delhi. My first day at school was an orientation session. We just had to spend the day getting to know the batch we'll be studying with and getting to know the school and it's surroundings. So I wore my navy blue divided skirt (a.k.a split skirts) and our orange and white checked shirt and entered the gates. Little did know that the two years I'll spend inside those gates will be my most memorable in my schooling years. Even today when I go back to Delhi, my visit is incomplete without a drive past Sanskriti in Chanakyapuri,  Dr. S. Radhakrishnan Marg. Supposedly Adithya was the first person I met. I don't remember this part at all, but he insists on it. Maybe I was too overwhelmed by the sea of orange in front of me to remember who i spoke to first.

Adi had already been a student at Sanskriti for three years when I joined. And as a part of the orientation, the old students had to take the new students around, showing them the school. I was in the Humanities section and Adi was a science student. We hardly ever spoke in school actually. The only ACTUAL time we interacted was when we both went for a school trip together towards the end of 11th std. And we were in the same group. I teased him about being Tamilian for some weird reason. It was weird considering I was South Indian myself, must have been something he said in that accent or something. In that trip, we had to travel to a village in Rajasthan in India and live in a villager's house for 3 days and learn about village life and customs and help serve them. It was a beautiful experience. I remember we had a session where we had to pick an inanimate object that we thought best represented us and explain why it did so. I picked a tree, and for the life of me, I can't remember why i did that. Anyway, so Adi and I really hit it off in that trip, we could laugh at ourselves as much as we laughed at others. And that was a quality I still think is hard to find, to meet people who are willing to take a joke on themselves and laugh along. We were mad, we were drunk on life those three days, our energy levels never dipped. We were always so high-strung. Mad. That's the word. We literally were mad.

After that trip, when we got back to school, our interactions became infrequent again and with board exams in the 12th std there wasn't any extra time for anything else. We really only bonded after we both left school actually. One random day, I was searching for something online and I saw him online on MSN. Yes, those were the days when we had dial-up connections and hotmail accounts with MSN messenger. Fun times. The anxiety that accompanied  the 'trr-trr-trr-trr' of the modem, never knowing if the connection will be successful or not. Haha. So I saw him online one day on msn messenger and I don't remember who pinged whom, but we started talking and we spoke for hours! Adi had left for Michigan after school and I was in college in Delhi itself. We spoke about life, love, education, parents, friends. Every possible thing that's going on inside a 17 year old's head. I liked someone then and he did too, so we would give each other advise on what to do, how to go about asking something, emailing or not emailing, deciphering sentences and words (and songs) they said. Haha. Some days he would be up late taking to me online and some days, I would be up until 2//3 AM talking to him. There were loads of times, we would ping each other the exact same thought or feeling and that's how we slowly started realising that our lives were literally parallel to each other.

None of those 'loves' of our lives worked out. For better or worse, who knows, they just didn't. But even today when Adi and I speak of those days and how crazy we were, we can't help but laugh at our teenage selves and wonder how we even got through college considering we spent every minute not spent in college, on MSN messenger. Now, I miss MSN messenger, sorry Google Hangouts, I love you too, but I'm just slightly nostalgic now. You know when you feel like someone gets you instantly, you want to reach out and hug them, Adi and me had several several such moments, we wanted to reach out and hug each other, and if my Intel powered desktop PC allowed it, I would have done so also. Instead we made do with this hug smiley : ({) and  (}). There have been days, when because of our schedules we haven't been able to chat properly,but every time we logged in, we would find a (}) waiting for us, letting each other know that we're always there for each other. Through our chats, I've walked with him in the grounds of his university and he has traveled with me in those dirty crowded DTC buses. 729, yes that was my bus from college to home and home to college. He would visit Delhi once a year and we would meet for the Christmas fair or Alumini meet in Sanskriti and be as mad as ever. All my friends would wonder how I was suddenly so close to him and all his science geeky friends would ask the same question.

One day, Adi, my other friend from school and me just felt like going to school. On a regular school day, when classes were on. Go eat in the canteen, sit in the Library. So we did. And we sat in those tiny chairs in the library, each of us had a book with us, books that we had borrowed/issued when we were in school, books that still had our name, roll number and signature on the "Issue Card" attached to it. Oh what joy! So our librarian, I don't remember her name, but we called her Hippo. Ok fine, I know, not one of our proudest moments, but hello (!) we were in school and we've all had such nicknames for all our teachers. So Hippo had this habit of screaming on the top of her voice (not the best thing to do in a library) whenever she heard whispers "Children, QUIET!" haha. So on our visit to school, she did that, and the three of us looked at each other and tried to give each other reassuring looks asking the other one to control their laughter, with pressed lips and widened eyes, but Adi started giggling and that set the ball rolling, we burst out laughing and where did we decide to hide, not in the numerous rows and rows of book shelves that could have hidden us from Hippo's view, but under that table we were sitting on. All of us went under that table and giggled and came back up with our pathetic attempts at composure.

So we were mad like that. Adi and I have never lived in one city after school, but we have always managed to keep in touch and tell each other everything that's happening in our lives. I've had my moments of disappearing and vanishing, something I do when I need to be alone, just with myself. No efforts to reach me in those moments will be successful. It was hard for Adi to cope with that initially and we had our share of bad fights, but eventually, he came to respect that space and when I came back from my hibernation, and get in touch with him, he would say "back to reality, now?"  And that's the beauty of our relationship. I take undue advantage of it. I know that and I feel miserable about it. But if there's one person I can do that with and who will understand me, it's him. He used to have this music attached to whenever i pinged him and the song was "Ek lo ek Muft" from the movie Guru. I don't remember why that song was special to us. I should ask him to remind me. But one night i was very very upset and he called me at 1 AM in the night and asked me to go sit under a table at home. And I did, and then he started singing this song, and i laughed through my tears, and started signing with him, the "yamo yamo yamo le" part was our favorite. Haha. So every time I messaged him, this ringtone/pingtone (i just created a word : PINGtone, Adi!) would play out aloud.

There was a time when I went off the face of this earth for a year in Hyderabad. And when I finally resurfaced, I emailed him and told him I was coming to Delhi and asked if he would be there by any chance. And he replied saying that in fact he was going to be in Delhi. And we met in our city. And I sat with him and told him everything that had happened in detail. He listened carefully and then hugged me.

We fight. A lot. Adi never bullshits with me, always tells me things as they are, and most times, I don't want to hear the truth. So I fight. Not very mature I know, it's the Leo in me.  But I'll invariably realise my mistake and leave my pigheadedness aside and apologise. You know, this concept of soulmates? Adi and I believe in it. We also think the book"The Alchemist" gives you kickass tips to live life and how if you really want something, the universe will always conspire to make it happen. Adi, in some way is my soulmate. Not in a romantic way, but in a my-soul-gets-his-soul and vice versa, kind of way. You know? We've gone through crazy times in life. And we are only 25. Crazy hopeless times. But we know that we always have each other to talk to and reach out to. In the last couple of years, I've drifted away from most of my friends, for reasons that are my doing and not. But Adi and I have somehow sustained that same bond we had when we sat under a table and sang into the phone. We've literally grown up with each other and our relationship has always been a long distance one. And still strong.

He is one of the few people who gets my concept of Bollywood love and believes in it and waits for it, the way i do. We are mad I know, but we actually do believe that someone somewhere is made for us (insert Dil Toh Pagal hain tagline) and that someday we will end up finding that person. In someway we also believe we did find that person and might have lost them, but we still have our hopes. He is the ONLY person I can share my dreams with, knowing he won't call me a freak and also knowing that he won't launch into a "you're living in a dream, things like these don't exist" lecture.

I'm sure we will continue to fight ,crib, cry, console, and love each other the way we have these last ten years. I love you Adi. I'm sorry for all the times I have disappeared, for all the times I have not spoken to you and gone and done something, for all the times I've said " Screw you, I don't want to talk you". But for every time I've done that, we've also sent each other thousands of ({) and (}) and called each other in the middle of the night, telling the other person to calm down (usually it's you calling me), been on the phone with each other and not saying anything. For the million things that we want to say to each other when we finally do meet, and how we don't say it and let those thoughts fly away as we hug, thank you.

For you, my friend, a thousand times over.

No-ya-na