Best Friends, Forever

My darling V,

I first met you when I was in the fourth grade. Me, an awkard tomboy with short hair and no friends, and you the funny, popular girl with pigtails. And it clicked. Tonight, I couldn't sleep because I thought I was losing my best friend of all these years. And so I tried to recap back into time. It almost choked me with emotion...

I used to watch you everday practise for your group singing in the fifth grade. You never knew, but I was always there. I could never sing. So I learnt the words by heart as I heard you. I still remember all of them. So, when I used to go higher and higher on that swing, watching the clouds turn pink, I would sing that song...

And in the seventh grade, do you remember how you hid that dirty book under your frock and we locked ourselves up in the girl's loo to read it? Do you remember me telling you about my first crush? Do you remember me beginning to grow my hair for the first time, as I started changing? You were always there, each step of the way...in growing..

...In learning, as we discovered books together, music together, emotions together...

In college, you always introducing me to your friends...our evening walks, talking endlessly and watching the night lights come on...our first journey to developing ourselves as 'pseudo intellectuals discussing dual metamorphosis'...Do you remember how you forced me to fantasise, possibly because you thought I was a prude and would remain a virgin all my life, because I could never talk to guys?

I changed, and you changed, and we turned into women...I entered a new phase of my life. And then you left...

It's been almost 5 years since you moved abroad. And in between that time, my jaan, life changed me. Your best friend broke her heart..and her hope...You weren't there. The time when I locked myself up in my room for days crying, the time when I decided to go away from this world for good, the time I picked up the broken pieces and put them back on the shelf...my heart was glued, but it was scarred...How I needed you then, but I was all alone...

And now you're here, always...still asking me questions through a telephone line...but you still think I'm the naive young girl you left behind. So you scold me for every mistake I make, thinking some ruthless man will use me and take my innocence away..But my darling, how can anyone now? How can they? And if I have failed to make you understand or said hurtful things, then I'm sorry...

I want you to know I love you. I always have, and I always will. You're my sister, you are me...Come back someday...our hills and fields are still waiting for us...

Always,

A