My Good Luck Charm

For seven glorious years of my life, I lived in Narmada Apartments, Alaknanda, New Delhi. That home of ours saw me graduate from school, college, university, experiment with summer and part time jobs -- all to earn some extra pocket money, then eventually it saw me get my first “proper” job. Several other good things of life happened during my stay in that house, which is why I will always remember it and the neighborhood it was situated in with a lot of affection and fondness.

One of the things that made Narmada Apartments memorable was the almost daily walk in the evening with Suvena. Suvena Bansal. A year senior to me from school, Suvena and I had initially rejected each other because to me she had appeared as “too unintelligent”, and because to her I appeared as “too arrogant”. So for all her years in school, we traveled from the same bus stop, in the same bus, stood always at the back (naturally ’coz sitting in the front of a bus and on a seat was something that behenjis did), talked to our respective friends, and almost rarely if ever acknowledged each other.

But all that changed the year Suvena graduated from school. I don’t remember what happened, when, or how, but we became friends. We swore lifelong commitment to each other based on our mad lust for Rhett Butler, our love for wicked women, books, hand written letters, men with good voices, chocolates, and the chemistry that we found between us. If not in each other’s house, then we were obviously out walking in the neighborhood, down the tree lined avenue within Narmada Apartments. The trees touched the skies while we went about our daily business of dissecting things that happened, people we met, our future plans, goals, everything.

Suvena’s most redeeming quality in my life was that she always knew how to make things better. You took a problem to her, man made or otherwise, and god knows that as a teenager there were tons of the former as compared to the latter, and she solved it for you. She didn’t get mad, she just chose to get even. You hurt her friend, you hurt her. Her brand of loyalty, clean heart, kickass intelligence, infectious enthusiasm, and the ability to know what was right for me although she was only a year older, made her one of the most wonderful things in my life.

Today, she is married. To a wonderful man, as also to her smart alec job -- the one she got after her IIM degree, (which only goes to demonstrate how utterly stupid my initial assessment of her intelligence was), and she is a mother. But to me she is not special for any of these achievements although they are all meritorious by themselves. To me she is special because she lets me be me with all my hundred imperfections and vanities, humiliations, heartbreaks, and defeats…things that I don’t admit to most others I know. Which is why she was with me when I went to check whether I have made it to St. Stephen’s because if the answer was no, I knew I would be able to deal with the rejection if I was with her. She made me smile, she cried with me, she made all my birthdays special, she found something to redeem my faith in myself every single time that I messed up, and I know how often that was the case.

Dear Bitch and a Half, I am missing you so much today. Don’t worry, all is well with my life here. I am working hard, I am living my dream, I am happy. But a bhelpuri and then coffee with you (for which you will insist on paying thanks to your ever present “Main badi hoon na” logic ) and after that, a long walk in the evening while our respective mothers shouted themselves hoarse from the balconies (“Will you ever come back home?”), would have done me a world of good. You are being missed, desperately.

Tell Akriti, she is a lucky princess, she has my good luck charm as her mother after all.

Love always,
Bitch and a Half

It's a party!

My friend Brittney Carman decided to throw a party for her daughter Stella today, for Stella turned four. Stella couldn't wait to tear open her gifts, she couldn't stop telling all of us, "I turned four!" and she couldn't stop hugging whoever she felt gave her the best gift.

Moving towards my sixth month of residence in USA, and now having lived in both big city and small town America, I can safely say that Moscow, Idaho, is a wonderful community to live in. I confess I am still homesick often enough, yet I also know that I will cry buckets when it will be time for me to leave everyone here and return to Delhi. Friends make your existence wherever you go, and I have made some truly special ones in Moscow. Happy birthday, Stella. Yes, you did turn four today!

  

27 Reasons Why Living with Manasi Kanuga is a Great Idea

1. She loves rum, silver, and dark chocolate.
2. She has a pierced nose too.
3. She sings while she cooks. (Actually we both do. And when we sing and cook together, it’s incredible fun. Our theme-based Sundays are right royal enviable. We pick a theme for the day, say, Juhi Chawla movies, or movies with the cheapest songs, or with the most annoying star couple, and sing the songs from that movie to the accompaniment of some musical instrument...usually the bread knife against the kitchen sink.)
4. She is generous. With time, affection, and laptop.
5. We think alike, and have reached a stage where we can look across the room at each other, and know exactly what we are thinking about the people around us.
6. She is a foodie. (Depending on the ingredient we have bought, the cook is decided, for we have our own specialties. For example, shrimps, fish fry and mushrooms are her department, just like beef, bhindi, and Sunday morning’s egg-based breakfast are mine to make.)
7. She listens.
8. She makes me behave when I am particularly restless.
9. She had enough faith in me to let me color her hair. I didn’t, so I made her sign a disclaimer that said, “If anything happens to me or my hair, that is, if I die or go bald, it is not because of Sayantani Dasgupta.”
10. She has a sweetheart of a boyfriend. Shardul is so nice that he has already been made the Mama of my yet-unborn twin sons – Babbu and Gosha.
11. She lets me do all the christening in the house. Therefore, we have had a guest turtle called Ramlal, and two plants called Hemlata and Sulabha.
12. She invents the most interesting words, and according to her, they should all go into my book. These include ugly-ly (just like beautifully) and proudful.
13. She has made elaborate plans on how to spend the millions we will both get once we win our respective Nobels. She in medicine and I in literature. (Our other dear friend Parul is getting one too...in Chemistry.)
14. Laughter is an important member of our family.
15. She loves dogs.
16. She desperately needs lessons when it comes to drawing smileys.
17. Even our shortest conversations are awesome fun.
Sample this:
S: Looks like Abhishek Bachhan can’t take his eyes off me. (AB was the wallpaper of her laptop for a while.)
M: Of course not! You stay away! Keep your hands off him!
S: My hands off him? Done. Easiest promise to make and keep. I will keep my hands off Abhishek Bachhan.
M: You bitch! I know what you’re thinking. I meant stay away from him.
18. There are times when I am sitting inside my room, pretending to read, while I am actually sulking either because I have had a bad day or because I am desperate to come back to Delhi. She somehow knows, that in spite of the “I am reading and I am all right” tone, everything is not right. So she stands either outside the door or comes inside the room and keeps talking until the time I start cheering up.
19. She reminded me nearly five times today that I had promised a blog post on her and a testimonial on Orkut. (Phew! The pressures under which a creative writer has to work!)
20. She hates horror/ghost stories. It’s lovely to threaten her with those.
21. Her warm, million-dollar smile can make even the most homesick person cheer up instantly.
22. In four words she is :Matter-of-fact, cheerful, witty, and kickass.
23. She loves the notes I leave for her around the house. As much as she loves the text in them, she loves their placement even more. They have appeared tied to the toothbrush, on top of the pressure cooker, tagged to the switchboard, tied to the tail of her stuffed toy, etc.
24. She has made it a point to touch base with some of the people I value the most.
25. She cannot cut cabbage because it is too time consuming. Duh!
26. She reads my blog regularly.
27. She is family.

Happy birthday M!
Love
S