Madame M

M came visiting me this weekend. Her first trip to see me after my wedding. And was I excited to see her!
It’s so funny sometimes that you meet friends after a considerable period of time and you are at a loss of any meaningful conversation. It kind of takes a while to get into the comfort zone, when you are back to being yourself in front of them. But this was not the case with M. Her chatty and warm demeanor instantly can put anyone at ease. And meeting her after 7 months (Yikes..! Seven months have passed!!!) did not seem like an eon. We hit it off from where we left.

It was funny to see her sport a ponytail now though. I mean I remember the first time when I met her at the company-training program 4 years ago. Her half brown and half carrot-red colored mushroom-cut-type hair and her white-faded-with-age gray shirt and dull-colored trousers instantly put me off. I thought her to be this smartass small-towner. And she thought I was snooty. :-)

She and I shared a strange sort of telepathic connection. I guess that’s what actually got us to be great friends. Both of us seemed to know what the other was thinking and many a times both would blurt out exactly the same comment or statement simultaneously, much to the surprise of others and us too. We used to get into trouble also together. We got thrown out of our hotel at 11, which is like the most unearthly hour in the sleepy town of Trivandrum. Almost lost our jobs by having the people in the server room of our workplace issue us warnings and memos for security breach for sharing passwords et al, got into trouble trying to get a girl, infected with chickenpox, treated in the heartless medical college hospital of Trivandrum, had the training head fuming and swearing at us for attending a session late (believe it or not, it was like that - being treated as children at workplace. Wonder how we took all the bullshit. Maybe we were kids after all :-) )

We both got posted in Mumbai. And shared the same apartment. She got a two-wheeler and life was all about painting the town red during weekends and working hard on weekdays. Movies, plays, pastas, wine, treks, long drives, cooking, playing host, cleaning, washing, cribbing, bickering, patching up, smoking - to check what is cool (?) about it and realize nothing is, midnight chats where she would keep talking and realize that she must stop the monologue when gentle snore is heard nearby, her beans-ki-sabji, my sambhar, me cribbing about new Hindi music and she cribbing about old…

Too many memories and far too little time and opportunity to relive them. Matheran, movie, long drive and hours of catching up notwithstanding. *Sigh*.