The first time I saw her; her hair was flying all over the place and she was biting her lips nervously as she tried to figure out the correct classroom. I gave her once over and thought, “Another South Indian behenji” and I resolved to steer clear of her.
But she had the magnetic pull, a charm that somehow made me gravitate towards her and we were becoming friends. She could tolerate my silly riddles like, “How do you make a soup of gold” and not attempt to strangle me to death. (Psst…the answer is use 14 carrots… karats…carrots, got it?) as I would happily polish off her idlis and sambhar that her mom make so that she would not get yelled at. She could laugh at my PJ’s and I could tickle her to death if she was ever sad.
I used to and still photograph terribly but she would keep pulling me into the frame. I tried various ruses to get out of it, but they failed.
This is my look sad ruse
This is my, “I won’t look at the camera” ruse
Eventually I gave up and…
We have had many adventures together. Like shooting for a documentary in the middle of rainy day, trying to distract a police officer while the other one would sneakily click photographs of a temple where photography, you guessed it, was not permitted and eating 50 pani puris each and then being sick for two whole days.
She was my Secret Santa Spy in college, it was her job to ensure that my Santa did not forget me. She once threatened a guy who forgot to get me presents for Christmas so much so that the next day, he came in bearing all of my favourite things!
We rarely chatted with each other on the phone keeping our mobile balances always in the green. We preferred to hang out in coffee shops when we had money or crash into my house or hers for food when we were broke.
I got into the habit of picking and dropping her off to Sion station which was about 15 minutes from college and my dearest mom started thinking that I have acquired a boyfriend!
Then after our final year of college, things changed. I got admission in a college that was 10 hours from Mumbai and she like a proper grown up started working full time. Staying in touch was difficult, and I thought that even we would eventually lose contact. But when I first returned to Mumbai from college, she was already sitting at my house grinning.
Rest was history. I ignored everyone and both of us went around trying out new places in Mumbai. One of amongst them was Starbucks! While I wanted to be one of the people who would dance up and down when they entered Starbucks on the first day of its opening in Mumbai, I was stuck in Tuljapur. So, in order to make my experience special, she decided that we are going to dance even though Starbucks had opened months ago. A few exceptionally posh customers did raise their eyebrows at two seemingly grown up girls get high on a cup of coffee, others just smiled.
So do Good Things Happen When We Get Together? Absolutely, yes. And that is why; I am going to take this opportunity, to ask Nithya to….
I know her answer would be to grab her purse and say, let’s go shop for the wedding dress. 😀
We remember the day seven years back when were travelling in a Mumbai local trying hard to come up withe a name for our blog when struck us; Khushboo was always called a Jack of all Trades. The name stuck (with a slight modification, of course) and Minni was born. Six years, over 100 collaboration, lakhs of readers and several awards later; our love for blogging continues to grow. We continue to write on an eclectic range of topics from the funniest autorickshaw signs that we have spotted in Mumbai to how to bathe an elephant. We are true blue Munni of all Trades and we hope to continue on this joyride with our fellow Munnies and Munnas. 