my best-friend, Simran...

SIMRAN… what can I tell about her. There is so much to write about, so many fond memories I have shared with her. I just simply cannot stop myself from writing about her.
It has been 10years since I know her and she has always been there with me in sharing my enthusiasm for weird stuff. Stuff many people fancy but nobody dares to put into action. Yes, we have done things people might not even dream about.
When I think of Simran, what comes immediately into my mind is playing in sand and stones, trying to catch each other on cycles at high speed, skipping ropes till midnight, dancing in rains and jumping in dirty puddles, analyzing lizards, writing “dusht-papi” on every dusty window pane of cars we can find, walking barefoot, going to ATMs and taking out blank chits from there, watching Timon and pumba and imagining our friends in place of the cartoon characters, sitting on top of our colony’s water-tank, sitting on the other side of the narrow railing of my balcony (which was on the first floor), going for morning walks {which can hardly be called morning walks because all we used to do is stroll around agricultural colony, pluck wild flowers, eat “Bandar ki roti” (or “ratanjoth” as Lovy might call it!), look at the sunrise, talk to strangers and on our way back collect dates from the “khajur ka ped”} and most importantly playing BHOOT-BHOOT!
We used to talk to all kinds of animals as if they were really able to understand us. Once we were speaking to a chameleon we had spotted in a park and then suddenly it reacted as if it had understood what we were saying, making us laugh almost for an hour! We together had also invented several games, which are quite popular in our colony now. We had invented a very complicated song game which many have still not properly understood, the Scooby-doo game and a game even for playing badminton! And we never used to simply skate. We would make stories while skating about two girls competing for a skating event and many complicated stories would follow. We would also make funny stories with occasional mention to aliens! We had even named one of the trees we used to climb often as “mausi ped”. REASON: one day we had climbed on one of the trees as a usual routine and were playing household or more precisely “ghar-ghar”, when suddenly Simran thought that we should not be climbing trees as it might hurt them. And since I loved climbing trees I was giving her reasons why we should not stop doing so. First I said that it might not hurt them because they do not have nerves and it is the nervous system that “feels”. Still she wasn’t convinced so I came up with a new theory. I told her that we sit on our mother’s lap all the time. It never hurts her because she loves us so much to bear the pain. In a similar way, these trees are also like our moms, Mausi and they would not mind us sitting on them. She was convinced with my answer and from that day onwards not only us but almost everybody started calling that tree as Mausi Ped!
And once during navaratri, we both had got oranges from a house we had gone for Kanyabhojan. On our way back, I had finished half of my orange while she hadn’t even peeled hers. At that time I asked her to compete with me in eating the orange first. She obviously did not agree with me, so I began lecturing her dreamily that we should take up impossible challenges and try our hardest to achieve them. Too engrossed in my dreamy thought I started singing the lines from some song, “who sikandar hi kehlata hai, haari baazi ko jeetana jise aata hai” when I suddenly realized that Simran was not commenting at all. It was then I glanced at her to see her mouth full with orange! I realized (a bit late) that I was too busy singing to notice that she had finished the orange before me while I was still holding my half-eaten orange. She smirked at me and still teases me for my foolishness.
I have also shared one of my most embarrassing moments with her or more correctly because of her! We were once playing boogie-woogie in our colony where we were giving our special performance when I turned towards her; she held me with one hand and let me go. I spanned myself away from her and when I glanced at the audience, everyone was laughing their hearts out. Both of us were nonplussed by their amusement. Then I suddenly realized that I was no-more wearing the skirt I had worn. We both were unaware that when I swirled myself away from her, she by mistake had held my skirt so tight that it came off me. We both were so embarrassed and she quickly threw my skirt at me and I wore it as quickly as I could have. This was surely my worst “boogie-woogie” performance ever! To beat that, she has made me fall from swings very badly many times and is even responsible for me to get almost drowned! We had joined swimming classes nearby and on our first day playfully were pretending to drown at shallow waters. At that moment she told me to do the same thing a little deeper and I agreed. She went deeper inside without realizing the deepness and suddenly slipped deeper because of the slanted floor and actually started drowning. I had already learnt swimming previous year, so considering myself to be an expert I went to her as a lifeguard. And when I reached her, she clung to me so tightly that I was hardly able to move. In between the intervals, when I managed to get myself above the water, I tried explaining her to let me go so that I could at least try to save us but the moment was very panicky for explanation. In the end, she forcefully made me sit on the floor on my knees and jumped on my back to ask for help. Unfortunately people still thought we were pretending to drown and nobody came for rescue. When I was about to exhaust, a little girl luckily came there with an air-tube and Simran immediately held her tube and managed to tell her about our condition in between her the deep breaths. And the next moment, she looked down to search me but by then I was able to rise myself up since I was free from simran’s tight clench on me. Since then, we never dared to even pretend drowning!
Another moment which I would like to mention in this post would be of the day we sang in an orchestra. Once when an orchestra had come to perform in our colony, I suddenly thought of asking them to let us sing too. At first, Simran was a little hesitant about it so I went there alone and told them that I wanted to sing. They readily let me sing and I sang “ajeeb dastan hai yeh”. After seeing me sing, Simran really wanted to sing too. She asked me whether I would sing along with her and I agreed. So we went there and again told them to let us sing. We had decided to sing “mann sath samundar dol gaya” and that Simran would begin the song and sing till the first paragraph and I would continue from there. So she began singing and to her dismay, instead of playing the tune of that song they started playing “kajra re” in the background which messed up the whole song. She still struggled hard to sing the song in rhythm but failed and I was there at the stage giggling at the funny situation. I didn’t find it pretty hard to sing the next paragraph because by the time my chance came, I had prepared myself to sing the song in other tune. But Simran was very disappointed. But in the end, we both agree to one thing. What matters is the memory. At least she can cherish the fact that she got the opportunity to sing in an orchestra!
I also love to remember the silly fights we used to have! We have fought for the skin of a jack fruit (to put it in our shoes, to get the acupressure feeling), and at times when we both got extra-competitive in Scooby-doo games or when we choreographed dances for navratri or the times when she would get jealous (extremely jealous) whenever I paid more attention to other people than her. The funny part about this is she used to get jealous even when I used to talk to her school friends who I hardly know! Anyways, Simran has always been one of my truest friends and I really miss being with her I miss the times when we would sit in our colony garden and start talking philosophy, going to her house and simply sit there in her kitchen while she made khichdi for me, riding vacant tthelas and the time when I used to teach her for her 10th boards!