The Newest Fellowship.

“I make friends very fast, but not fast friends.”
Something that continues to haunt me for a lifetime, now I guess when I look back on the 25 odd years of my life.

Friday Evening, sometime in September.
So it was 10:30, well past in the night and most of the regular ‘mall-rats’ [those wannabe pretty young things wearing gravity-defying skirts and killer stilettos, hanging onto their hunky five-days-a-week-gym boy-toys flaunting their biceps in itsy-bitsy tee-shirts] had all gone home to cuddle up and whisper sweet nothings in their cell phones. The Mall outsides wore a deserted look, the wind was slowly picking up and I watched a plastic cover [that environmental time-bomb] slowly dance a tantalizing tango on the ground, buffed by the chill wind.

“Thank You!”
The voice brought me back to the world. I turned around to face the source of that ‘thank you’.
MK. [Notice how that rhymes with your Dad’s initials...grin] gave me a hesitant uncertain smile. I nodded my head and smiled back.
“You’re welcome”
She immediately flashed her regular mischievous grin and skipped along, falling into step beside me. “Okay!” and that made it sound like the most natural thing for me to be dropping her off home in the nights. I shook my head and smiled at myself, “Yeah Right!”
It has always been tough to make conversations with this group, especially her. Me, the nerd, only interested in comics, fantasy, alternate ‘Angrez’ music and she, dreamy, full of zeal and joie-de-vivre, a movie and sitcom maniac if any and a habit of exploding into maniacal bubbly peals of laughter every five nano-seconds. No way! Not even remotely compatible even in my most optimistic rose-tinted dreams.
(Hypothetical Hi-Five….Niiiiice! Grin)
So here I was, willing to drop this absolutely ‘nice’ [ I need to qualify this nice, because in spite of having spent her formative years in Delhi, gone to an Engineering college and actually stayed over in a hostel – horror of horrors-and then went on to do an MBA – no less- from – OMG- Goa (Of all the places), this girl retained that ‘nice’ tag – which trust me, Is Near-Impossible] girl back home, taking a 3-km detour away from my home at late night, with whom I had absolutely NO chances ever of hitting it off and yet, here I was, doing the very same thing! - Super fluffy-brained moron? Check.
So why was I doing that? ‘coz I realized at this point in my life, I could really use some time hanging around genuinely nice people. And that is what these guys were. Without any hang-ups or pretences. They were plain nice people, a welcome addition to my starved life! [ Ye know am conveniently forgetting all those lovely episodes of 'How I Met Your Mother' sitcoms, the countless movies that I copied from the precious HDD, the innumerable treats at CCD, the Nicknames that still continue to haunt and of course the inevitable fights that break out - but wait, Am jumping the gun here. That calls for another long post!]
And now I am drifting away again. Life’s turns has been so violent, am usually thrown off my rockers skidding uncontrollably. It so happens, I am leaving (In fact, already LEFT) this organization and jumping onto what K. (Now that’s another of the nice people I have befriended!) terms as, “as closest as it can get to a dream job break in marketing and I really hope you rock it here”. So just as I liked this bunch, I have had to call it the quits. Ironic!
There’s also Sh., who’s probably the most simplest and endearing persons I could ever have come across, and fits so effortlessly into the genuinely caring friend role with anyone he meets. Labeled by some, as the ‘bestest in the group’, he unfortunately forms the butt of all jokes. Another long one is due on this chap because there’s no dull moment with him or Mk. around in the group.
Keep your tabs on this coz am coming back to write a longer one on this topic. Peace out and don’t forget to brush those ‘kitaanu’ with the dishum-dishum toothpaste at nights. ( and No, I aint endorsing any brand for Gawd’s sake!)