My Gunpowder Friend
This week will be about friends and lovers, for obvious reasons. They say today is "Chocolate Day" (whatever that means), but I say "better friendships are forged over gunpowder idlis".
“Make a list of young achievers in the city.” Anindo da with cigarette on his breath and one in his hand, was standing at my desk.
In my earlier three-month unpaid stint at a local news channel, I was a voice over artist turned anchor turned reporter. Now, here I was —A trainee reporter at the Jamshedpur bureau of The Telegraph. The Telegraph.
Stoking and curling his moustache with his little finger, my new boss snapped me out of the LaLa Land I had slipped into — FRONT PAGE BIG BANG CRIME STORIES.
A LIST.
A list, of course.
Trainee reporters DO NOT get crime unless you can bump off the existing crime reporter. And it was just the second day of a job that was going to pay. So…
“You and Jasmeeta can do it together. She joins today.” He said, walking back to his cubicle.
J-A-S-M-E-E-T-A
My imagination ran wild — Tall (about 5’8”). Fair. Burly (but not bulky). Long hair worn in a single plait (very long hair). Jeans and top. Loud and cheerful. Very rich. Punjabi? Sardarni? I already decided she wasn’t going to be my type (whatever that meant) but that I would make it work.
“Dubey.” Anindo da read out from a piece of paper, perhaps her resume, as he started walking towards the exit of our very beige office for his 15th cigarette, still stoking his moustache tip with his little finger.
D-U-B-E-Y.
I quickly shifted gears — Still tall-ish (about 5’5”). Very fair. Little less burly. Ponytail. Salwar kurta. Not so loud. Middle class. Bihari? Perhaps she would be my type and we would make it work.
Then the real Jasmeeta Dubey turned up.
She was barely 5 feet. Fair. Thin. Recovering-from-TB thin. Short hair. Boy cut (I think). Heavy glasses. Bat blind. Minus 9 or minus 11. Clothes I don’t recall. Soft spoken. Hearty laugh. Intelligent voice. Odiya. Tata kid. And from the same college (it is another matter that she totally deserved to be in SRCC while I was the fluke entry). She was totally my type (again, whatever that means) and this was going to work.
And it worked like a dream!
By the way, that list was a disaster. We had made a list of all our friends. It was a miracle that list wasn’t the end of our journalism careers.
We had fun. I don’t know what it was but we clicked.
She got me gunpowder idlis from home (the first and the best I ever had) and I recompensed her with chicken-chawal from a Nepali dhaaba (that I had never seen). I remember being mildly pissed the first time the gunpowder idlis were offered to others in office. Jasmeeta was just being civil. But thankfully the Bong-Gujju-Bihari crowd found it “very hot”.
Jasmeeta and I— we are very different people (except for the choice of exceptionally shitty Bollywood songs).
She is confident and intelligent, I am gullible and naive.
She behaves like an elder child, I behave like I am in class 7 C.
She is witty, my wit comes with a jet lag.
The calmness in her voice when she conveys a medical emergency can be unnerving, I am only human.
She works with the precision of a scientist following a flow chart, I have pretty much flitted through my life without a plan.
She is Amma to me, I am Mashi to her.
She is an excellent mother, I am Savvy to her Jabbar.
She is the goat, I am the twin.
She is earth, I am air.
In fact, she once told me I was liquid (or was it fluid?). That stuck with me. Of course, I would have liked to be called solid, but I really am not. She knew exactly who I was.
She knows exactly who I am.
When I waited for Jasmeeta that day to make that list, I wasn’t expecting a friend. But when she walked in to that very beige newspaper office 20 years ago, I had found one for keeps.
This got written during the Ochre Sky Writing Circle’s prompt “Things I didn’t know I was looking for till I found them”. Things and can make you write.
I have received exactly two Valentine’s Day gifts in my life. The first was in college in Pune when on Feb 14, a friend thrust a large bouquet of flowers into my face while peering over his shoulders, quickly scanning the alleyway to confirm that the girl he actually likes did not witness this act of treason. My then long distance boyfriend and current husband had asked him to deliver this “gift” to me as a prank, since anyone who knows me, knows that I do not know what is to be done with displays of public affection. I received my second gift today. Close to 20 years after the first incident. A love letter. From another friend. An ode to our friendship. One would usually not think that there would be any long lasting affection between a gunpowder hogger, crime patrol lover, book stealer and the shy girl with an unnatural collection of cringe Bollywood songs, but what can I say - you can’t really control who you fall in love with!
Such a heartwarming read!