Being cool

I miss you all the time.

I was re-reading things I've written about you last night, and I remembered that summer when we realized we just couldn't be fashionably late. We were always on time. Even if we tried to be late, we'd get there before a party really started.

You and I both wore watches all the time. I think for a while you slept with yours on. I still do.

Remember the party where we tried to be cool but landed there early despite our best intentions. Then we needed to call our mothers to say we are coming home later than planned? Someone handed us a cell phone, and neither you nor I had seen one before and had no idea how to operate it. So we gave each other the 'look'. Over the years we have perfected the 'look'. It could mean different things at different times, but we always knew what it meant.

 I am not sure who invited us to this party, I think they were brothers. I remember  us thinking they were very cool. At any rate, they had cell phones and we didn't even know how to use cell phones. I bet you would remember their names. I don't.

Rohan commented on one of your pictures and said you were easily one of the coolest person he knew. I saw the comment last night. It was in the past tense.  Seeing things written about you in the past tense, makes me agitated. I also thought of the hundreds of times, we tried hard to be cool and it didn't seem to us that we were succeeding.

Clearly at some point you at least had succeeded at being cool.

Love you. Miss you. Wish you were here.

A new normal.

I had almost 20 years of you in my life. 20 years of celebrating and complaining about our live.

I remember us walking on the 23rd and Ely subway stop, and you were telling me about how you don't like treadmills. You had started "gymming" because you felt you were getting fat but you refused to get on treadmills. Or for that matter those moving walkways either. I remember you complaining so much about being fat after you had gained weight from the chemo. I told you to stand next to me, and you'd feel a lot skinnier.

I miss you every time I say I am fat.

I miss you in tiny little details.

I am taking a stats exam next week, and I remember the time I came back from seeing you in Bombay and I had a stats exam. I was sure I was going to fail. You wrote to tell me, that if I fail, you would take me to Paris. If I pass, I should take you to Paris.

I miss you in mundane things.

Your death makes no sense. I look through our pictures, re-read your letters to me, re-watch your wedding videos, look at your facebook page a thousand times to make sense of what happened.

How could this really have happened?

How could you be so alive and happy? Then so miserably sick and then dead. In two years.

People tell me, this is going to be my new normal. A regular existence without you.  A new normal. A recalibration of my emotional scales. 

I still reach out to text you something, since I know you don't pick up the phone anymore, then I stare for a while at the phone. That is my new normal. 

Everdearest

When you used to write letters to me, you addressed me as 'Everdearest Priyanka'.  I was in classes on Friday, when I remember this bio exam you took and you accidentally had the book open in your desk. After the exam, you were freaking out because cheating was considered one of Loreto House's cardinal sins. You didn't cheat, but you were afraid that someone would think so if they found out about the open biology textbook.

I sat in front of you, for every exam. During the rest of the school year, I sat next to you. Mitra came before Mukherjee. Every exam, well not Bengali, you asked me to hold my paper up so you could see what I had answered. Every exam, I dutifully held up my answer sheet for you. After every exam you told me, you didn't actually check my answer sheet.  But next exam, we'd do this again. How odd were we?

Yesterday, I dreamt about you. We were bitching about someone. It was well deserved, trust me. When it happened, I picked up my phone because I wanted to share this story, but then I put down my phone, because I just didn't think anyone would get it. In my dream, you shared my sentiment about this.

I am tired and out of it a lot. I know I should be working but it all seems so pointless.

I am not having a good week. I wanted to teach psychology of gender but am teaching pyschology of stress management. Doesn't it seem ironic that I am teaching others about stress management? It seems like a cosmic joke or at least cosmic snark. I write letters to my dead friend and I will soon lecture people on managing stress in a healthy way. At least it's not a grief and bereavement class.

I Love You

I love you.

I needed you in my life.

My life has been hard enough. You should have been spared.

I thought I have been avoiding getting drunk because I didn't want to spiral into depression.  Turns out, I just didn't want to fall apart.

Somshukla said she thought, after my childhoold, after Subho, I would be given a free pass. Turns out we were all wrong. I would still lose you. How is that fair? I had my fair share of pain, you should have been spared.

Your love was important to me. It meant more to me than you would ever know. It meant I counted amongst normal people.

I walked down Third Avenue crying today. It's too much pain. Why you? Why not someone else? Someone less important to me.

Yes, I know it's selfish but love is selfish. I need you alive. I need you in my life.

I love you. More than you know.

I am strong, but this is too much for even me. This is unfair. It's cruel. It's mean and it's spiteful.

I don't want you to stay dead. I want you to come back to life.

I don't want to let go.

I just want you back.

You belong in my life. You don't belong to the dead. You need to come back to me. You need to be my best friend. I still need one. And I don't want another one. I just want you back. I need you back. Come back to me. Please.

Tomorrow, I will wake up and this will be a bad dream. Please let it just be a bad dream.  Please just come back.

Not Manolo Blahnics

I have a pair of your shoes. I was looking at it the other day and it reminded me of the times, you inherited my shoes. I don't think I ever actually bought you any shoes, but I guess I figured if you liked one of mine, you could have it.

You wore a pair of my shoes, when you first visited Parthoda's family. They were these bamboo looking espadrilles. You came back and told me how Parthoda and his family were such perfectionists. Later when they were planning to visit you guys, you were on the phone with me giving me details on what was being fixed in the house. You really admired Parthoda's perfectionism and his meticulous planning. When he asked your sis to marry him, you were so proud of the way he did it. I have always found this very endearing, the way in which you were very proud of your family.

When I had gone to India for Arun's wedding I had these red sneakers from Aerosole and you loved them, and so they became yours. I took Tari's. So for a while we wore matching red sneakers. We had bold fashion, the two of us.

Today I had gone to the East Village for Brunch, to 7A. You and I have been to 7A before, but that's another story. Anyway this waitress was wearing a pair of shoes, that were mine and then yours. They were these high heel black leather knee high boots. You wore them in Bombay, and told me you had the hottest shoes in Bombay.  Even though your feet hurt, you loved those boots.

A few years later when you came to visit, I remember us talking about how old we have gotten. That wearing heels was such hard work and we could just not be bothered anymore. I wish that were true. I wish we were actually old. I wish I was an eighty year old blogging about the death of my best friend. I don't know which is worse, the numbness I sometimes feel, or the overwhelming sadness, or the unbearable panic. Sometimes I think I am over the worst, and then in a day I know I probably have barely scratched the surface of the worst.

I remember now...

His name was Aziz. Pretty sure you dated for about two months.

So apparently I was wrong, I didn't throw out our letters. Ma found them and got some for me. I spent part of the day reading them.

Do you remember when we used to go to computer lessons together, after ICSE. It was so bloody hot and I never had anything to wear. They were trying to teach us MS DOS. What a colossal waste of time. After a while we just stopped going and started hanging out.

That was the summer we met Jojo and Rudro. We also hung out a fair bit with Bhai. On the way to Radhika's house, I fell off the bus and scraped my knee and my new white jeans. I think you mocked me endlessly about that. Not all of us can be graceful, some of us are clumsy. Bah!

I remember that we were chatting with this gorgeous guy, in St. Xaviers campus that summer. He was really good looking. I think he was interested in you, but not you in him. I have this memory of us sitting on the bleachers talking to this guy about his insecurities and ego. For a gorgeous guy, he sure did have issues.

That same summer, or was it a summer later,  I ran out in a towel in the middle of shampooing my hair. I remember you and a group of other people were there.  I had just been chased out of the bathroom by a cockroach. You looked very calmly at me and said "I think cockroaches are cute".  There's a pic of the two of us in towels, a few years after this incident. I don't remember that day at all.

I hate that there are gaps in my memory. I was reading the letters and had forgotten some of the names in them. I wanted to call you to ask you about them. Your number is on of the few numbers I know. It's strange to think that I will never dial it again. In a year or so,  I'll probably forget the number.

We got too little time together and even in this little time, I can't remember it all. The memories are all I really have left of our friendship and even then, there are gaps. 

Sleep & Such

I have had a good couple of days. Not really sure why. But every time I try to sleep I get terrible anxiety. Also my left eye has been twitching constantly. It's very strange.

 I kept having these strange thoughts about you. I have totally forgotten the name of your first boyfriend. Azad? Something like that. I briefly thought of writing to Robita, Payal and Radhika and asking if they remembered. Why do I need to remember this? In the grand scheme of our lives, he really didn't count. So why is it that I am obsessing at 1.00 AM about his name?

I have been thinking about that time in Pune when you took me to your school, on your bike. At some point I shut my eyes, because I was convinced a bus was going to run us down. When we were out of that mess, I told you, "Debooh, I was sure we were going to die". You very calmly looked at me and said, "Yeah, so did I". And I replied "OH MY GOD, THAT DOES NOT HELP REASSURE ME AT ALL". And then we laughed.

After we got to you school, I got off your bike and tore my pale blue linen pants in the process. Then for the rest of the day, we had to travel with a bag covering my torn pants. Fun times.

I remember how we joked that the waiters always gave me the bill. We were not sure why this happened, but we could always predict it. Or how you laughed at me when I used chopsticks at the Thai restaurant in Pune.

I miss you all the time. I have missed you  so much oft and on for the last two years. I didn't think after this year, I would really be even to tell the difference when you passed away. I thought I had become used to missing you. I was wrong. I can tell the difference.

As my best friend you should know that had it not been for Lisa, Gargi and Somshukla, I am not sure how I would have made it through this time. I wish I were able to call you and tell you this.

Magical Thinking

I have been having strange thoughts about your aesthetics. How you wore these black rubber bangles for a year or two. How for a while you wore eyeliner on your top lid only, then switched to the bottom lid. Rarely both.  My style was flashy, yours was strikingly simple. With a strong emphasis on striking.

I remembered how you mocked the gold lipgloss that I got from MAC during Arun's wedding. You said "priyanka, only you would buy something like this". Later you took that MAC lipgloss from me. Ha!

I remember our matching burgundy pants that we wore constantly. Like the Osho's. We were deeply attached to those pajama like pants.

I remember us smoking our first cigarette together and you promising me that you wouldn't smoke anymore. Then the following summer I came back, and you were smoking regularly. Yet even in that, you were so moderate and controlled. No more than 5 a day. Whereas I would do a pack or nothing. We were different in those ways. You could do the middle ground, a lot better than I could.

Did you know you were going to die? I have often wondered this. 

I knew. 

I now say it was because the statistics on stage 4 breast cancer, in young women is pretty dismal but really its because of magical thinking. The type of thinking that goes like this, bad things happen to me and people I love. Around me, the shittiest possible outcome, is the most likely outcome. I sometimes wonder if you were someone else's best friend, would you have made it through? If I were not in your life, would your chances of survival be magically higher?

I know that this is illogical and likely untrue. Knowing and feeling are not the same.

You sent me a text message in July, asking me to let the other girls know that you loved them. Did you mean for me to do this in July, while you were perfectly capable of texting them, or after you were gone? I am not sure. 

Thank You

It's been a whole month today. One month, without you. It's been a shitty fucking month.

This month, I found out that you are a whole lot more sentimental then you let on. You had cards and letters from when we were 18. I threw mine away eons ago. I hate clutter. I also expected you to last as long as me, so I didn't see the point in holding on to them. I found the True Love perfume box last night and smiled about it.

I started reading some of the letters I wrote to you, but honestly got bored. Thank-you for reading through that crap. No one really thanks friends, for the times we bore them to tears. Yet they still stick around. Thank-you for reading that meaningless drivel and still sticking on in my life.

There are other things I want to thank you about, like the way in which you trusted me. We had this strange conversation once, where I told you about this friend of mine, who didn't trust me around her partner. I remember you calling that girl, "a true idiot". For moments like that, small little thing that mean so much, I thank you.

I want to thank-you for all the times you listened to my dad's insane rambling about religion. And for never bringing it up again. Never embarrassing me about it.

I thank you for being in my life. For knowing when to give me a ear, and when to tell me to get a grip. If you were around now, would you ask me to get a grip?

The last words you said to me were, I love you. Thank you for that.

Thank you for upgrading me to best friend status, in 8th grade, in a True Confessions book.

If I had to do it all over again, knowing what I know, knowing how much pain  you would end up causing me, I'd still pick you. I hope you'd pick me too.