WITHOUT YOUR KICK...

Sometimes friends are like magic tricks. Momentary and colourful. I could never cut an entire body in four symmetrical halves, or present a pigeon from a big hat. I never tried swallowing a coin. I was sure; I’d never find it behind my ear. But the Magician could do these things. He could do a trick, and do it again. I used to sit in the front row amongst sweaty, excited children, just to see how he could turn a rose stem into a candy bar. I was awestruck as a little girl. I was always handed that candy bar after each magic show ended. Then at bedtime, when I bit into it, that candy bar always turned out to be rubber.

STAGE ONE : CLASS 3 - 9

The friendship germinated in an awful Bengali class. I’ll call her ‘Yellow’. Yellow and I were as thick as thieves. We jumped on jungle gyms, shared icy bites of orange stick, devoured the five-rupee chow and religiously made pretty friendship bands every year. Over chatar-matar and jhaal chips, we have also had serious conversations about how boys were dirty and mean. Yellow was my first best friend. She was fun, smart, she could draw well. We hardly had anything in common, but we were soul sisters. I remember sometime in class 4 or 5, we had a Christmas Fete in school. I had around 15 rupees left. Enough to buy lots of goodies - a five rupee papri chaat, a five rupee aloo chaat and a five rupee orange stick. We gallivanted to the last stall in line.

It had a lot shrieking and activity. I saw the hullaballoo was over a Rahul Dravid poster. Yellow was a big fan of Rahul Dravid. But for 15 rupees, Rahul Dravid was expensive. Well, I didn’t mind spending my 15 rupees for her then. She was very happy and she gifted me a really cute badge. It had Winnie the Pooh on it, and it said: “You are special”. I still have it. I think. Yellow was always more mature than I was, she always had the better idea, the better taste in music, the better advice. I enjoyed Dunston Checks In, she enjoyed Animal Planet. While I giggled over a newly learnt word called sex and repeated the word over and over again, she thought it was improper. I was impulsive, uninformed about the world, stupid and emotional. But I knew one thing. I could do anything to make my best friend happy.

Class 9 onwards, the constraint became slightly noticeable. Yellow found better friends who were more mature with finer sensibilities. Well, by then our friendship had gone beyond repair. I missed her, and I could never understand why someone who knew Richard Bach could not be friends with someone, who didn’t know Richard Bach. We went to the same high school, where things never got back to the same. I forgot about my scratches, hits and misses and lost friendship bands. I met a new colour.

STAGE TWO : Class 11 – 2nd year college

I’ll call this friend Brown. Brown and I got talking because we were in the same carpool. The telephone helped us become fast friends. We chatted for hours, dissected every little detail in our past, went for lunches, had our share of coffee conversations, truth and dare games, and confession nights.

We were apparently tackling a stage – where we had liberal views about live-in relationships and contract marriage. We had similar opinions about our parents, who were then agonizing.

On her 18th birthday, I decided to do something special. I remember I had painstakingly made 18 cards for her, writing hard enough to roll out a tear-drop. I had also baked a cake. It was also the first time, I was cooking. My first meal, which wasn’t for family.

I remember writing a million pages for her in her school diary when we left school. Well, that was expected. The best friend had the best memories, the best times, knew the best secrets. Brown and I, didn’t have too much in common either. The first big difference was - she was a science student. Her men were dark and lanky, mine we charming ones, who could never be trusted. She understood The Beatles, I was beginning to like Jim Morrison. She could whip up great dishes, I was happy with Maggi. She was an introvert, I was comfortable with strangers. Trouble began when she roped in a boyfriend. Trouble doubled when the boyfriend fancied me. Thus, the tears came pouring down. She wouldn’t believe I didn’t like dark, lanky men. And I didn’t believe, she’d accuse her best friend. Suddenly movies were not fun together, conversations finished before the coffee, we stopped sharing and we stopped caring.

Soon enough, she thought I didn’t know too many guys, didn’t know how to dirty dance with that good-looking prefect, afraid of tattoos and always nervous about sipping a beer. Times had changed. We had grown up. We were part of a change, that wore pink bras under white kurtas, we were part of a change where bhadro bangali boys knowingly had beef at Oly Pub, we were part of a change where we thought, larger the love-bite the braver the woman. And as I saw Brown, blend into the crazy, vacuum world, I still couldn’t do a dirty dance or get a tattoo. As she says, ‘Madhura, you’re going to die an old maid.’


And then, when the Magician placed a row of eight eggs on a giant wooden box, we wondered what the next trick could be. It was a new trick. He covered the box with a huge cloth. And as we prayed for a rainbow, or Humpty Dumpty, he whisked the cloth roughly and a galaxy of eight colourful stars shot up. They were beautiful – red, yellow, blue, green, brown… and as they twinkled on the ceiling, I realised, without that brown star there, and that yellow star over there, I would have never enjoyed the magic show.