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