To Us... Cheers!

This post goes out to my posse... The crazy bunch of guys and girls scattered across this country that are just one missed call away from jumping onto a plane in order to save the other from:

• Themselves
• Thugs
• Crazy landlady/lord
• Assignments
• Boredom
• Having to watch movies alone.

This post will be downright rude (at some places), brutally blunt at others and you will know exactly who you are. Just remember that I love you all.

Nutcase One – He has a huge ego – so big that I’m surprised his not-so-big body can lug the extra weight around. He is painfully honest, unlucky in love (and I’m not entirely convinced that he wants to be lucky in it), very mean when provoked and hates people who “preach” (“Balls, man!”) and shuts down faster than a nuclear reactor when hurt.

He will never tell you how frustrated he is with life when he can’t find the job he wants. He won’t complain when he actually hates asking his brother for money. He won’t ever let his confidence slip when he is scared of where life will take him.

He refers to me as his “fate” and I know he loves me more than I deserve to be loved. I know that if I’m crying, he will quietly lend me his shoulder. If he does something that hurts me, he will come and say sorry with this sheepish expression that makes me realise I’m one of the lucky few who he doesn’t let his ego get the better of.

Nutcase Two – He is incredibly shy and in more ways than one, very much like his brother (i.e., Nutcase One) but minus the ego. He is intelligent, inquisitive, diligent and a self proclaimed Math-geek. He loves custard apples and detests egg yolk (people have survived bigger faults) and when he gets to know you better he talks nineteen to the dozen (thus negating the first impression.)

He never lets anyone know when he feels lonely. He doesn’t yell, scream or shout when he is hurt or angry. Neither does he air his disappointments with himself or others. He never holds a grudge. He wants to buy his brother a scooter because he doesn’t want him to walk so much. He hates it when his sister cries over the phone but he bullies her just so she starts laughing again.

He works so hard that he is dead tired at the end of the day, but he’ll still want to meet with me everyday just to give me a hug. He likes watching me eat especially when he knows I will never be able to clear my plate and will invariably hand it over to him to finish. He loves it when I tickle him but it’s supposed to be a secret.

Nutcase Three – She is a parrot. She never forgets what has been asked of her to remember. She never ever breaks the rules. She will quote verbatim and expect us to believe that these are her views rather than her Feminist Studies teachers. Ever since she slipped off her scooter in front of a cute boy, she has been scared to get back on it. She insists she wants to lose weight while her gym membership rusts in the corner and she packs on the pounds. She is a closet romantic (and part of my hush-hush society) and secretly loves Mills and Boons. She adores being told she’s an intellectual but all of us know better.

She hides the fact that she is scared of getting hurt. She quakes inside, but puts on a brilliant facade while public speaking. She is terrified that anything should happen to her grandfather, wishes she was “half as beautiful and intelligent as her mother” (her words though I think she is beautiful enough on her own – the intelligence she will have to earn) and adores her incredibly adorable father. She loves in secret.

She will tell me I’m one of her closest friends, even though I don’t get her at times and she knows it. She will tell me I’m being a loser and immediately feel bad about it. She will bring me food even though she stays 40 km away from where I live just because I'm missing home cooking. She has held me through the night when I had a panic attack and told me I look pretty with puffy, red eyes the next day. I never got to tell her, “When you say it, I believe you.”

Nutcase Four – She defies stereotypes. She is everything everyone else isn’t. That’s the only introduction she is going to get.

She is smart, intelligent, sassy and downright cute but she won’t believe you if you say this to her. She hates being bullied by the two people who really should have taken more of an interest in her rather than try and mould her. She has a “generation gap thingy going on” with her parents. She loves and wants nothing in return. The odd thing is she deserves it more than anyone else. She cries after she gets high on two glasses of wine and can’t do simple arithmetic. She is great at giving advice that she doesn’t want to do anything about herself. She stays awake for three days if she has to, just so she can finish personalising gifts for her friends yet she is taken for granted and she hates it but she won’t say anything about it. She doesn’t even realise she takes herself for granted more than anyone else.

She promised me that she would try not to let me miss my mom when I go shopping for my wedding. She heard me tell her things that would give my dad a heart attack and never judged me. She always squishes my nose because she thinks I’m cute. We talk at the rate of knots with each other and make perfect sense (only to each other). She is a “Hush-Hush Closet Romantic Society Member” along with me and Nutcase Three. She makes it easy to be me on days that I don’t even want to look at myself in the mirror.

Nutcase Five – Neurotic doesn’t even begin to cover it. A classic Type-A personality, she loves over-achieving and cribbing about it. She is way ahead of her times in the way she carries herself and the Cosmopolitan’s “Fun Fearless Female” award should definitely go to her. A social butterfly, she is also of the rare species that parties hard but orders milk at the bar (doesn’t drink tea either.) The standard she demands of herself would be enough to make lesser mortals want to curl up and die.

She loves uprooting herself from time to time, not because she likes starting over, but because she has taken commitment phobia to new heights. Her childhood experiences have propelled her to never trust anyone but herself, hate scenes of any kind and a sudden need for space to the point where she will tell the people closest to her “to stop pretending to be friends” (never giving us any credit when it comes to understanding why she needs to do this.)

In school, we sat together and gabbed about boys and movies. We still do. We call each other the most horrid of names but with so much of love that we’re soul sisters. We watch each other’s backs and she’s the only reason why I got on a train to Mumbai alone and unsure but so excited. She calls me her “Munchkin” and gets away with it. I always tell myself that it has nothing to do with the fact that she is a 4 foot 10.5 inch package.

Nutcase Six – Her name means “energy” and nothing suits her more. She has so much to do at all times and not enough hours in the day to do it. She adores animals which is probably why she was first in her biology class at dissecting. She gives everything her 150% and holds nothing back if you were stupid enough to ask for her opinion on what you are wearing.

She is so happy all the time that you sometimes don’t notice the sadness that linger from watching her loved ones suffer from a painful illness until she tells you. She laughs so loud that it covers the way her fingers shake due to worry. She won’t share until you ask her to but she expects you to do so without any prompting from her.

I shared my accommodation with her for almost a year and a half and somehow she’s worked her way into being an essential member of the pack. She cries at almost every movie that we have watched together but she’ll still hug me like I’m the one who was bawling. She takes me out shopping when she knows that I will be a pain in the wrong place about it. There’s nothing we like more than zipping around on her Honda Pleasure pretending that we’re birds flitting across the sky.

I always feel that I don’t do enough or say enough to make these precious nuggets feel half as important as they are to me. So I’m going to take this opportunity to tell them that I would do anything for them and to keep us going. I guess “friend” isn’t really the right term to describe the dynamics of this bubble that we seem to have found. We’re more like a platoon – all of us broken, battered and battle scarred in our own way. But somehow with each other, it’s easy to admit that we hope for our happy endings.