A Tribute to Our Friendship

  

Note: I won’t be uploading any picture of her or ours. You know, she is not around to tell me which picture should be up and which ones should be avoided. Till date, I respect this opinion of hers. 

Finally, you have it 

Carol: Aren’t you ever going to write about me on your blog?

Myself: On your wedding day. Exclusive!

Carol (laughing): Irri asay ho.

Introduction 

I will not talk about Carol’s sickness and her untimely death. I am here to share to the world about our friendship, a friendship full of happy memories. There are so many memories but for this post, let me just present to you some of it. You will definitely get an idea of how awesome our friendship was. I pray, you too will be blessed with a friend like her, at least for once in a lifetime. 

The Beginning 

It was in the monsoon of 2009, I was having my lunch in the legendary Godavari mess, JNU. Carol came with a bowl, back then I didn’t know who she was. She walked towards me; pour the rice from the big steel rice bowl which was on my table. 

She looked at me and asked, “You’re from Nagaland?"

I replied, “Yes!”

She asked, “Do you like the food of our hostel mess?”

I replied, “It’s okay, what can we do.”

With a bright smile, she said, “I have meat pickles, come and collect it from me, whenever you want.”

That was it. 

Messi Vs. Ronaldo and Dance Beats

In all these years of friendship, we never had heated arguments or had moments of ego clashes or acted childishly by ghosting each other. I think we had so many common grounds and we shared the same political ideology, making it hard to have petty arguments. We understood and respected each other so well. 

Our days were filled with friendly banters though, she tagging me on Messi’s memes, I tagging her on Ronaldo’s, debating who is the best football player in the world, waiting for the opportunity when one of them will make international headlines for the wrong reason so that we can share with the caption, “Read what your man has done.”

Oh! How much we danced to the beats of Western and Bollywood songs, the ambience was the witness. On our hostel night, we performed a ‘Club Dance’ and the song for this dance was, ‘Lady Marmalade,’ it had a French phase, “voulez-vous coucher avec moi (ce soir)” we did not even know what it meant, later we came to know this song was made popular by this provocative line, which in English translates as, “do you want to sleep with me tonight?” Anyway, we gave our heart and soul in performing it but the audience reaction was, “it was a dance parody, right?”

I felt insulted but she was like, “It is all part of creating memories. Years down the line, you will be talking about it.” Damn, that was prophetic. 

New Haircut: Know when to keep your mouth shut

Once she told me to accompany her for a haircut. She wanted to cut it really short. After she was done, she asked, “How do I look?

Actually, it was looking kind of funny; the hairstyle did not suit her, at all. 

She must have read my face. Before I could even open my mouth, she said, “ Remember, I paid 750 bucks for this.”

I was left to say in a robotic tone, “It suits you so well. You look so chic.”

She laughed at my helplessness. 

Ultimate Counselling Disaster 

Keeping the best for the last, this one needs your imagination too. 

Few years ago, one of our male friends broke up with his girlfriend of like 7-8 years. To cheer him up, Carol, a common friend and I visited him. He was in no mood to talk, so he put on the music in the highest of volume and start dancing, it was some strange western song with trashy lyrics. We, the three dancers got so into zone that we started jumping around doing crazy steps; I stood on the sofa and was screaming the lyrics. On the other hand, Carol was lifting her hands, doing the chicken dance moves, swinging her hips etc. We were not drinking; we were not doing drugs just that we got so much into the mood. Suddenly, out of nowhere, the ex-girlfriend showed up. She gave a stern look which meant the fun was over. I was so embarrassed, wanted to disappear. Carol, who was dancing away to glory just few seconds ago, was like, “Hello, we were dancing.”

Few moments later, we were kicked out from the house.

Prologue not an Epilogue 

Carol, you are now in the land where lilies grow wide and free. If you reading this post, you hardly miss my blog post this won’t be an exception, I just want you to know, I love you so much and I will always treasure the memories we created. I will wait for the day when we will meet again. We will dance because that is what we really good at, hahahhahaha! Until then I will save the last dance for you.