"Insert cliche Hindi Film friendship quote"

Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda

I have a lot of friends who are the very reason I stay sane or insane I should say. They let me be myself, they let me accept myself and they love me for exactly who I am. I wouldn't have been this person had it not been these people who kept my insanity in check.

I've always had many guy friends, my best buddy is one. I've never had too many girl buddies (even after having been in an all girls school). I have no problem with girls, I've had just never met "the one" or "the two". That changed in Bangalore, Each day, I am glad I wake up with my phone list that shows at least a few names I can call. I make this post to two people who I love very very dearly. I cannot make this post without stressing enough on how important these people have been to me.

This post is to my extended family, I guess I will have to write separate posts about Dipti, Swati, Ann, Zuli, Poorvi because they are awesome. But this post I make out especially to Zainab and Pooja; my roommates, my extended family, my late night call buddies, my cry my heart out to people, talk crap and forget people.

This is a story that goes back 2 years. I go to this awesome PG next to the college I studied at, it was a  nice place, I asked the aunty there who my roommates would be, she said she had options for 3 flats and I picked Flat 1. That was the BEST decision I made. I picked flat 1 for the only reason that aunty said these people work and are not students, so it struck me that I would possibly get the house to myself a lot and I could have silence around the house all the time. (I was to be blamed for all the chaos that ensued in that flat).

Day one of the moving in.  -  Generally, I get along well with people older than or younger than me it's just my age that I struggle with. I had moved in all my stuff previously and then comeback in June to live. I hadn't met any of these people, so I was full of anticipation   Day one, I finished college and walked home and fell asleep, as usual both Zainab and Pooja were at work. So I did a 'flat to myself' jump of joy and went on to read some and then fall asleep.

First impressions aren't everything, I can tell you from my experience from these two. The first day was not all great, I had fallen asleep on the couch after reading and at about 7 in the evening Pooja enters. I am tall and I had occupied the entire couch, Pooja screams to another roommate, "Arre toh aise hi hall me soyegi kya?" she was clearly annoyed that I was sleeping in the hall. (LOL) it gets better, I wake up. I walk in without a word. I am just out of my sleep and just wondering if I'm going to be bullied by all these ' grown ups' in the house. (I was wrong; Pooja was the one who got the maximum amount of torture)  BTW, later these same people covered me with a blanket when I fell asleep and tiptoed around me when I slept. Yelled at my other roomie for switching on the TV when I was sleeping and stuff like that.

Zainab I hadn't met till the second day, Zainab doesn't really like people who are annoying. She is very straight forward about that. She is just 'I will beat you up if you mess with me' person. You know when she is pissed, she hates 'stupid people'. The problem was ,I am no engineer, I just assumed I was one of those  'stupid people' she would be annoyed with.  I was just going to try really hard to be friends since we clearly had nothing in common. I was a communications person, these were engineers. If they weren't so nice,  my engineer buddies really would have beat me up for how much I troubled them.

Once you get to know Zainab, you know how adorable she is and once I knew how she really was was, I realised how wrong I was about her initially. Zainab is a fashionista if I know one. This woman knows stuff. It's just really fun to discuss everything from books to boredom. We can talk about boredom, like *actually* talk about it. I've spent many waking hours talking about everything under the sun, late into the night. We'd suddenly realise it was 3 in the morning and then try to fall asleep. Her sense of humour is quite awesome. You should get her to do a few famous impressions. (Amazing)

With these two people I've shared a friendship that comes with a lot of kindness, a lot of genuine concern, a lot of joy. This friendship is based on a lot of respect. Although I've chosen to ridicule Pooja on soo many things, I had this nickname for Pooja (Saala Engineer) I called her. It was not to mock engineers. There was just no disrespect at all. (None intended at engineers reading this). Pooja says the most random things, it gets all complicated when she is talking and then you have to stop her and go 'Oye! Engineer' that's her cue to explain again. That is all. Pooja defies laws of Physics, just like that. But I know when she does it intentionally  as well. Just to get us to laugh about it.

With Zainab the friendship is based on our mutual hatred for certain things, ;) as a group we hated Hindi TV Shows and I just get a kick out of criticizing every goddamn thing on TV. I've collectively seen what feels like a million years of TV time. (Most I've ever seen in my life). I watched these shows only to piss Pooja and the fellow roomies. Zainab and I teamed up. On one of the days we just thought what roles we would fit into and Zainab and Me were immediately cast as the villians (The evil nanad and devrani type people).  I know we were being silly but we enjoyed this,  Pooja who was the kind and submissive character. I still remember telling Pooja ' Zara baby ke liye paani garam karna" (I'm not a bad person, I was only joking because Pooja is just too kind and we wanted her to lose some of it, to make us look good. We'd all burst laughing after that.Okay, Pooja starts most of her sentences for me with 'Kaminey...' (Just so you know I wasnt being abusive)

This stuff wont make sense to anybody. This is all contextual, but I really wanted to write about them. These are people who took care of me when I was down with a terrible fever. They were people who called up from work to ask me how I'm feeling, they (All my roomies) have thrown me a birthday party when I was not expecting it.. They've seen me at my worst. They are probably the first set people I will choose to tell about things in my life.

This post really brings back the wonderful things we did as roommates, I share completely different friendship dynamic with both of them, but both equally important. Every phone conversation I've had with both of them has lasted a few hours and in these hours we have gone from being happy to sad and back to happy again. We've all had our challenges to work with and we've all done it and dealt with them in the best way we can. Hell! We've done excellently!

I missing living with these people, I miss those "girly" Friday nights, those Pizza treats, all that hanging around comm street and brigade. I miss living with people who know to have patience, I miss calling Pooja 'Bai', I miss hating things with Zainab, these people know how to treat with kindness, to love without conditions, to point out exactly when I am being a complete nut case! There are so many things I could tell you about my friends and about the time I spent with them, those late night ice creams we shared, the dinners we've had, TV shows we've loved. I wish this post wasn't already this long and I wasn't bursting with excitement to post this.


**Most of the things I talk to either of them are unsuitable for the blog post; let me just refrain from writing about them.**