The Real Write Ups -- Ann

As I wrote write-ups for my friends for the College Yearbook, I realised how hollow it is to attempt to compress into three sentences the relationships I have built over three years. Here are the Real Write-Ups. 


The first image that comes to mind when I think of you is one where you are sitting at the back bench, with a book open, one leg crossed over the other, picking at your cuticles with your nails and reading intently. It makes you look curious and stern at the same time. It makes me imagine you as one of those professors that wear gorgeous silk saris and take no nonsense from their students. But of course, as with everyone, despite your shyness you are easily liked by your students. With that stubborn expression and a copy of Frontline along with the attendance register.  I can imagine you giving free attendance and silently smiling to yourself remembering how much we enjoyed it in College.

As my thoughts traverse on, our memories span across my mind like a film reel with your fingerprints marking every frame. When you broke down in the Metro. When you've hugged me for no reason (even though you're not a hugger). Malayalam dictation in Coffee Day. Endless hours of chatter (and quietness) in various comfy chairs and lawns in Delhi. Shopping as an excuse to go restaurant-hopping. Boys and continuous marriage conversations. Home, being away from home. Cherai beach and flopping in each others' homes. Fatness advice and lamentations. Just as it's impossible to isolate one frame from a two-hour long movie, so it's impossible to defragment all the million memories and list them out.

You've awed me, from the beginning. I was once asked why, and I never could come up with a good enough reason. Maybe it's the Malayalam or the music we share. Maybe it's Wills.  Maybe it's because you're so vehemently closed around most people and in contrast, so breathtakingly open around a few. I'd like to think it's an amalgamation of things that compound one over the other.

You are the golden sand that I dig my feet into when I go to the beach. Even as the waves spatter foam all over my legs and distract me, the strong foothold that the sand gives me makes sure that I am not carried away by the current. You are the epitome, not just of stability but this beautiful sense of calm. Even as you break into song sometimes in the middle of a conversation or laugh spontaneously at my ridiculous jokes, it is your unwavering presence holding me upright in times of doubt and confusion that keeps me close to you. It makes you stubborn too. In a way that makes me afraid to question or oppose you. When you say, "no", there is nothing else you mean but that. In a way, I respect that you are strong with your decisions. In a way, I resent that I can't attempt to change your mind.

Your sternness though is never present for long. You always replace it with that childlike smile of yours. I am going to be so very upset when we are forty and you still look like a twenty-five year old. As the weeks and the months pass on and we worry about our place in the world after College, I find myself missing you already. For even as the red brick and stone arches display their charm, the lawns and trees play the songs of the birds and the corridors paint gleaming sunlight rectangles on the floor, none of it has any depth or meaning unless it is filled with the people that made College home. I couldn't think of walking these halls without you right next to me and it is this thought that makes me fear what comes next.

Before I can let myself be sad, your voice plays in my head. The voice of firm assurance. I am reminded that we are not friends that disappear after College. We are the ones that will makes toasts at each others' weddings (I am already writing my speech). We will exchange prawn recipes and share secrets of where to get the best kappa biryani. I will think of you every time I hear Sultans of Swing. I will also laugh to myself when I am on a Spice Jet flight with crying babies. You will always be around, guiding my reckless little boat on this frightening sea of life.