A Girl-Friend!

Our first picture together. Too special! 

Though she was nothing more than another face in the sea of faces at the coaching center  something about her caught my attention. What exactly was it, you would wonder? I don’t know. Maybe it was her attractive face, or maybe it the riot of colors she wrapped herself in, or maybe it was just because she was the only unknown face in the line to use the washroom that day. Whatever it was, I noticed her. And then I noticed her everyday. Some days I wondered which classes she was taking, and on others I silently complimented her bright choice of colors, yet she never lingered on for more than five minutes in my mind. After all, as I said, for me she was just a bored observer’s object of casual fancy, a face in the crowd.

Then one day I saw her at the metro station. I had been catching the same metro at the same time every day for the past one month, yet this was the first time I had seen her outside the coaching center. Preoccupied as I was due to an upcoming test, I chose to ignore her. The metro rumbled into the metro station, and the doors slid open, she tapped my shoulder and said, “Hey, we are at the same coaching right? “ I smiled pathetically and mumbled a yes. (You can’t blame me, tests make me grumpy!)  We took adjacent seats in the metro and exchanged courtesies. After 5 minutes of conversing, she suddenly (and very painfully) reminded of an old friend (foe actually) and the rest of the conversation was not exactly a pleasant affair for me, as I kept sensing a healed wound stinging again. We exchanged numbers and I offered to pick her up in the morning, as we found that we lived quite nearby. Later into the day, once I was out of my ‘test- mood’ I realized I was unconsciously being hard on someone who unknowingly reminded me of a forgotten pain. Yet it was not the same person. So, I decided to be my best self the next day. As assumed, we clicked off pretty well, and I saw it blossoming into something deeper that just a casual friendship.

We slowly unraveled a big list of similarities, common ones, weird ones and eerie ones. As we started spending more time together, I started observing more closely. Her intent brown eyes seemed to say a lot at the same time seemed to hide a lot. There are times she would smile mischievously at something I said, leaving me in a lurch to figure out what she was thinking. With every peck on the cheek and tight hugs we shared in the corridors assured me it was friendship to stay. Her straightforwardness, intellect and determination to make something out of her life, impressed me.

And then, the unnoticed got noticed. Not once, not twice, but every single moment we spent together- the fact that we resemble each other. No we don’t ‘just’ resemble each other, they told us, in fact you are twins. You sound the same, you dress the same, you look the same, and you smile the same way.  Now we have resigned ourselves to the undeniable fate of a ‘past_life_blood_tie’. A friendship that started a year back and feeds on promises of a lifelong bond, it's is not a mere part of my life, it’s a part of my self.  

And there are 39 more years to spend together. Sigh! :P