Since they mean so much to me I did think an ode to some of them is appropriate. I never realised how important they were until I actually was deprived of their company. Some I have written about earlier but not all. Some thirty years after I left school and having lost touch with all of my schoolmates,I entree a local gym and caught sight of a woman on a treadmill . She looked every inch like a girl I had spent many hours playing with . She was the only one in school those days who had roller skates and we made sure we went to her house to use them. Also she and her sisters came in the middle of the school year and were from Singapore. Having never has foreign (anyone not from our hometown were foreigners to us) students before we were all fascinated to see them and deeply disappointed when our teacher told us they were Indian born and all that but as we got to know her,her funny accent and her winning ways and the fact that a new playmate was available in the neighbourhood was enough for a start of a new friendship. So ther she was in the gym and I had to walk up to her and ask and she looked stunned to be asked having no clue at all as to who I was. I may have changed a lot since I was a child but like all good relationships we picked up the pieces with ease. We had had our ups and downs more downs in her case and she was glad to have some adult company more so a childhood friend. Today we go to church together ,have managed to help each other in many ways and have become friends despite the thirty year of no communication.
Yet another school friend. She also came in the middle of the school year and was from North India which to us was alien country. The fact that she spoke Hindi which it us southerners was like Greek and Latin was a big source of fascination. Add to that here was a girl whose mother worked in some government office (most of our mothers were housewives). She was a bit aloof kept to herself and thought of us as babies. We still played house and had toy kitchen sets while she had books to read. Somewhere along the line we taught her to play house and we to read fiction and thus began a friendship that continued till we left school. Thirty odd years is a long time and we were now older,some of us single,some mothers and some grandmothers too but all of us with ageing parents. So as each parent died and obituarys appeared in the local newspapers,we looked to see if it was someone we knew. This is how I found my friend again. So I called and as both of us had lost a parent we cried on each other's shoulders,shared some parts of our life,(she still remains aloof as in childhood) and continue to keep in touch.
I started work in a dusty newspaper office wher to be even well groomed was to invite comment. This was an age when everyone looked harried and scruffy as a sigh of being anti establishment and very intellectual . But India was changing and with it the media was also trying to get a glam look so they started hunting out talent from the service industry which is how I was plucked from a glamourously stylish environment of a five star hotel to this dusty office and which is why I felt so put of place here,but a job had to be done and I needed to make a living so there I was. A month later yet another gilt from the hotel industry joined and despite her looking aloof and cold,our joint disgust of our unglamourious environment made us friends. Now here was a woman with a young child who ran a house had a family of her own and to me single and out to have fun,this was a new perspective. Since we lived in the same next of woods we went home together me riding pillion on her rickety bike. It was the start of a friendship that has been both rewarding and frustrating. Years later I saw he through a divorce,she used me as a sounding board and I in turn turned to her for advice on all manner of things. She is good with people,social,talented and a woman of many facets. I am a loner,take time with people and am awkward in social settings but we swim together,do yoga together,love gardening and have become so much a part of each others lives that for me not having her around is so difficult. She became a grandmother so off she goes for two months every year to see her kid and grand kid and I think the person most affected is me. Why do I miss her so much. At this point in life I realise it's important to have a woman friend to just talk to. We see each other everyday and still have things to say or our silences are never awkward . I didn't realise how much a friends absense can affect one until she called this morning and I spoke non stop. It's still a month away before she comes back but for me it's like a lifetime. Our conversations are never inspired,she talks of her daughter me of my husband and extended family, we have plenty to say about our fellow swimmers or walkers and most often than not people think we our sister. We have this funny way of wearing the same colours or similar clothes and can finish sentence s for each other. It's a funny friendship, we live close to each other but visits are rare and far between but we kind of know when the ther wants to go for a walk,we can almost understand the others mood by email,it's that close and yet not uncomfortably close. We guard our space but the friendship endures.
There are lots more girls to write about some remain phone friends,some I meet at reunions,some are a necessary for my well being and some I just need to know that they are around. But whatever their status in my life,my life would be duller and unhappy if it wasn't for the moments these girls provide. We grew up in innocent times and we continue to preserve our age of innocence
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