As a kid, I made my parents get me bunk beds. I didn’t have siblings, it was usually just the 3 of us at home but still. I wanted a bunk bed. They dutifully got me one, because it is true what they say about only daughters. I lay awake at night and unpacked my day with the empty bed below. Sometimes I heard my parents murmur about their days to each other. I did the same. Later, I got a One Direction poster. Then I told them about my day as if they were laying in the bunk below. I just found something nice about having someone to talk about my day with, so I imagined it.
Now Nirupama comes over. After dinner, she lays on my roommate’s bed as I put on night cream. Sometimes she works on her laptop while I read Murakami. And we’re friends and we’re girls so we gossip and gossip and we make fun. I tell her how my classmates annoy me, and she tells me how her major is hard. I tell her I read silly little books for class but I hate that no one actually gets them. We both know a girl who gets on our nerves. We both have people who hurt us so we don’t talk about them. The imagined bunk bed friend became a real person in college. I didn’t know her a year ago, but now we do every little thing together, and that’s on a compatible class schedule.
When you’re in school or college your friendship relies on this convenience. Often that’s why once the convenience is gone you don’t feel for those people anymore the way you once did. A few stay behind, the ones you feel comfortable calling in the middle of the night. Then Sanjana and I are standing in the elevator, and I get this sudden fear that we will end up where other friendships have. Forgotten and abandoned, “we were never close”, “she got weird”. But then she says something funny, I laugh aloud with my head thrown back and all the worries are momentarily gone. We sit on a terrace with her college friends on a winter night and talk about how we became friends for the thousandth time. We show off our best-friend status, that we’ve been friends for so long. At this age, it is something to gloat about. I allow myself to feel safe, to imagine that we’ll have countless nights like these. I hope I always know if she’s okay, instead of just praying that she is.
My father’s college friends come over sometimes and they always take out photo albums from years past. I realise these days that the phase of life they talk about is my life right now. Our life right now. Someday I will look back at the pictures of now and remember them as days of our golden youth. So, the people in my photographs should be people I want in my living room decades from now telling my children who I was in college. Friendships in childhood were perhaps better but also casual because I never expected anything in return. The reason we were friends was because we couldn’t play Tag by ourselves. But now, I crave comfort and fun. I expect my friends to make my life better. I am alright on my own, I can walk all alone happily, so if I call you into my life they have to add something real. Something that makes my life feel lighter.
As we sat waiting for my Garlic Bread, a poor excuse for lunch, Diya and I watched Grey’s Anatomy. I had the overwhelming urge then to take a picture of her, to remember her here in this place, and at this moment of time. When I took the photo, it was an act of hope. Someday, years later my kids will ask me about it and I can tell a story full of fondness. I have photos that I will probably never again speak about, they’re in the corner of a drawer in my room. But these photos, I will stick on my wall. These photos will always carry a thread of gold.
Nirupama and I stayed up talking on the balcony one night. The air was crisp and the night was clear. We sat on a mat and doodled something random. She covered three pages, I covered one. I forgot about the chill for a night, it never affected her. I cannot recall a single thing that was said. I cannot remember what made us feel so close. But something about that night imprinted in my memory, something magical. Something about 12:30 AM makes things seem right and true. I don’t know if it was the cold or the company but for the first time in a while, I could breathe.
She gave me her puffer so I wouldn’t catch a chill but it was of no use. I got a cold the next day. It turned out to be 8 degrees later. Sitting outside was a mistake but not really. She texted saying I can text her during the night if I needed anything. A bunk bed friend, that’s what everyone needs really.
After that once at 10 PM when Anoushka asked me if I want to go get ice cream right now, I said yes. Even though it was winter, and I had only just recovered from the cold. Saying yes instead of no is such a powerful weapon to completely turn your life around. We ate ice cream while talking about high school, and middle school. We had things we wanted to take off our shoulders. Back then, it felt like I was the only one with these problems. But somewhere there was Anoushka too, who knew what I felt. We just had to meet on a college campus years ago.
So I learn to stay up longer than usual. My bedtime of 10 gets extended on some nights when 4 roommates come together to debrief and make plans for trips that could happen in the summer. I cancel the gym slot in the morning. I should exercise but something tells me the nights I stay up talking will be remembered better. Love lies in the monotony. I don’t need to be at the beach or have a sparkling drink to have fun with them. They can just be in my room, in the cold, and I will remember that night for the rest of my life. Love is also a choice. I could see the negativity in everyone. But I choose to love them despite everything. Because they do the same for me.
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