My Wishes For NV....

....the week before her wedding.

As fiercely as I cling on to my old friends, I’ve come to learn that it’s possible to love the new ones just as much, and want the very best for them always: whether or not you know all their history, their journey, their mistakes and their triumphs.

I can’t lay much of a claim to knowing what true romantic love is all about, and descriptions and best wishes and sweeping hand gestures (that ALWAYS knock over a few wine glasses) don’t seem to do the emotion justice. And marriage – well, never had a clue, doubt I ever will, so how can I know what wishes I’m bestowing on this friend of mine? However, Pablo Neruda’s Sonnet XVII has always seemed to be the best way to put a voice to my ineloquence. From the moment I first read it, I thought “That’s what I want someday,” even if the thoughts were half-formed and shooed away as wistful and longing. But, for the people who have found that love….

So, for you, NV:

“I do not love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
Or arrow of carnations that propagate fire;
I love you as certain dark things are loved:
Secretly, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom and carries
Hidden within itself the light from those flowers;
And, thanks to your love, darkly
In my body lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where;
I love you simply: without problems or pride.
I love you in this way because I know no other way of loving

But this: in which there is no I or you.
So close that your hand upon my chest is my hand;
So close, that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.”

I hope your love, your wedding, your marriage, and the life after is all of this, and so much more. All the very very best to you and AM :)

As Ever...

... Bombay was superb, sublime...beyond words, even.

I'll attempt a few, but maybe next post, when I'm over my homesickness and the horrible wrench of missing A.H. and N.M. and all the others. I honestly can't wait for that old-age home we're all moving into in our 80s ...at least we'll all be together!

Confessions

Growing up, and attempting to be a tomboy (not very successfully, though…how many tomboys had waist-length hair and were scared to climb up to the garage roof?), I’d rather have submitted to Chinese bamboo torture than admit I had the soul of a romantic. Actually, I’d still rather go through that. And ‘soul’ and ‘romantic’ might be pushing it a bit… it’d be more accurate to say I have the reading preferences of a mushbucket.

In what was an extremely rare occasion in my life, a couple of weeks ago I had dinner with 7 women. I don’t think I’ve ever actually had that many female friends in my life. But I digress. During the course of the evening we all ‘fessed up to our guilty pleasures – ‘Gossip Girl’, ‘Glee’ and, of course, Romance Novels. Guilty on all 3 counts for me. I’ll go into my Chuck Bass and Mr. Schu obsession (not together, ew….although, can you imagine Chuck Bass singing? Sacrilege!) another time, but ah, romance novels…

A friend’s mom got me hooked onto them when I was 15 (prior to that I just devoured Sweet Valleys, remember those? Gawd, what with the teachings in those books, it’s a miracle I didn’t turn out to be a sociopath/ kidnapper/ psychotic loon/ boyfriend stealer…oh, wait, nevermind). I was bored out of my skull after the Class 10 board exams in Delhi, and at that age where I wanted to go out and party but wasn’t allowed out past 10 p.m., so I turned my already-voracious reading appetite into something of legendary proportions (out of sheer desperation, I even read cookbooks. But I never tried out the recipes, of course. That would’ve involved people eating my cooking and dying horrible painful deaths). Then Aunty M, ignoring my upturned nose and disdainful expression, lent me The Christmas Special Bonus Edition 3-in-1 Mills & Boon (I kid you not, they actually fit all that in the title page). And that was the beginning of the end for me… forever after I would expect men to have a tough exterior with a soft heart (like baked alaska?), a cleft chin (face ass!), a strong jaw, eyes like melted chocolate/ summer skies/ leaves/ glaciers/ insert-cliché-here. And be at least 6 feet tall (yeah, that hasn’t worked out too well for me in the past. The last guy? An inch shorter than me. Aiyo). Never mind the fact that I hardly had an alabaster brow or a heaving bosom (not at that age, at least).

Anyway, my absolute favourites, without a doubt, were the ones where the protagonists started out positively loathing each other and then, bam! Ended up in love. As a romantically-challenged (read: deprived, stunted, innocent) 15-year-old, I couldn’t quite fathom HOW they got from hate to love, and the whole sexual attraction thing was mystifying in the extreme, but man, it made for entertaining reading! Sometimes I wonder if that basically screwed me up for my early romances, because I have to admit to being attracted to guys I argued with a lot (but I think that had something to do with the fact that they matched wits with me. At least in the past. Nowadays, I just get annoyed). And I expected (and got) a lot of drama in relationships (which is why it’s SO much easier to live the life of a nun now). But the one thing that I’m ashamed to admit prevailed over the years is the dream that there would one day be a man who’d sweep me off my feet, be as besotted with me as I was with him, and we’d live happily ever after. Shocking, I know, since I’ve always stridently proclaimed that the last, absolute LAST thing I wanted or needed in my life was a man. Not that I lied…I’m happier without one, especially of the caliber I generally meet. But oh, to meet one who’s like a romance novel hero? And not gay? I’ll take that!

I read somewhere recently that romance novels have warped women’s ideas of romance and their hopes and expectations of a man. I kinda agree with that, since I now expect all men to be assholes who are secretly good guys. Turns out, I’m only half right.

Here We Go Again

It’s Raksha Bandhan again, and, although we don’t celebrate it in our family, I’m back to taking stock of all my memories of my baby brother. He will, undoubtedly, roll his eyes in embarrassment at my ooey-gooeyness and tell me to get a grip. These are things I have resolved to do:

- STOP calling him ‘baby’ brother. Well, at least not in front of his friends.
- STOP crying everytime something amazing happens in his life – academic distinction,great A – Level results, being accepted to University.
- I WILL NOT cry when he goes off to college next month.
- I WILL NOT pepper him with a barrage of calls, messages and e-mails, and I will let him settle in and make friends and get a bit of distance, as every teenager should learn to do when they leave home.
- STOP lecturing him on all the possible dangers and risks of being a stranger in a strange land, and instead encourage him to look forward to everything he’s going to experience there.
- STOP looking at his old baby pictures. I have GOT to get with the program…I’m 27, he’s 18 and he’s not going to automatically revert to the adorable 2-year-old in the photo just because I miss carrying him around.
- I WILL NOT go into his room and sit glumly on his bed when he’s away, missing him awfully.
- STOP tearing up everytime I write these mushy posts (it’s the hormones or something, that’s it).
- STOP writing these mushy posts (especially in the office).
- I WILL probably end up breaking each and every one of these resolutions ages before he leaves.

Please, God, if you could reeeeeeeeaalllllyyyy slow down time for the next month, I promise to try and be a better person! Or a less weepy one, anyway. I know my brother would be eternally grateful for that.

Happy Rakhi, baby.

Escapism

I got back from Bombay over a fortnight ago, but I still can't bring myself to write about my trip. Why? Because it'll mean I'm not there anymore .... leaving this time just felt harder than ever. No particular reason why, except that nowadays I welcome falling asleep at night because I get to delve under the covers and pretend I'm in bed in Bombay, where I belong more than anywhere else on earth. Anyway, to counter the aforementioned bit of doom and gloom, I'm recycling an old piece of crap I wrote, ohhhh, 4 years ago. Ah, for the age of innocence :)

A novice's guide to the game
Checking out a member of the opposite sex is a time-honoured, prolific and surprisingly tricky pastime. Time honoured because, well, please, you so know that your great-great-great-great-great granddaddy stood in those ballrooms and watched the waltzing women, waiting for their voluminous petticoats to flutter and expose a thrilling one inch of ankle. La, what a shocking charlatan that woman is, I saw her ankle. Prolific because, as with a lot of things, you can do it anywhere, anytime, any how, in a variety of ways, and the playing field is huge. They ain't kidding when they say there's a lot of fish in the ocean! And I've always rather wondered who the 'they' is who keep saying things. But I digress. Ah, yes, and surprisingly tricky because you don't want to get caught. Unless, of course, you do want to get caught.

As with every other species, human beings have their hunting grounds, and of course, the predator and the prey. This is probably one hunt, though, where the predator and the prey intermingle fearlessly, and often exchange roles as well. There's a secret (well,okay, not-so-secret) language of nudges and winks and lascivious stares and hisses of "Psst! Hottie at 3 o'clock!" Sometimes, of course, the guerilla warfare can get a little confusing. A friend and I were sitting on a hot summer day at Leopold's and I was delighting in a chilled glass of coke while she was delighting in the scenery. Said scenery was a beautifully proportioned German hunk-extraordinaire, and she was getting her jollies watching the movement of his manly throat as he guzzled beer (sad, I know, but we were socially retarded.) To get my attention, she whispered "Pssst. 4 p.m." I, of course, promptly checked my watch and was rather nonplussed, since it was barely noon. Then, again, she said "No, no, 4 p.m." Ah, that made more sense. Cute guy. But whose 4 p.m.? Hers or mine? Giving up on that, I simply swivelled around in my seat till I was faced with a vision that made me go "Hubba hubba". But quietly, of course. And I made a mental note to learn whose side the time zones actually referred to, because we passed quite a blissful, but confusing, hour exchanging hisses of "3 a.m." and "9 p.m." which always culminated in us just giving up and blatantly looking around till we spotted the quarry. Of course, the highlight was at the end of the hour, when the aforementioned German hottie paid for his beer and, before leaving, strode up to us to whisper in his sexy accent: "It doesn't matter whether it's a.m. or p.m., it's just 4 o'clock. And it's more effective if you speak softly." Really, I've never used the time zone technique again.

Another time I was out with my friends at some pub or the other that seemed to have a wonderful assortment of the most magnificent women. For the guys, of course, it was like a box of chocolates, and for me, well, I was just watching the fun (and letching maybe just very little). As women walked past., the boys would mutter "8" or "9.7" or "6.5", an archaic and offensive rating practice amongst men that is nonetheless highly amusing. More amusing, in fact, when one woman heard my friend T.K. say "5.8" and, in a fit of temper, sloshed her drink all over him and said "In your dreams, I'm definitely a 9". Lesson number 2 is the same as number 1: always keep your voice down.

Now, as I've said before, there's an art to this game. Sometimes you don't want to get caught checking out the goods, and sometimes you do (don't play innocent, we all want to get caught sometimes. Isn't it just totally worth that knowing smirk and twinkle in the eye?) Me, I play it rather safe. Never approach men in pubs, or anywhere, really, but I sure do look. Only once, I remember, at Jazz, did I see someone I might actually want to approach, but of course, propriety (and the fact that I'm a total chickenshit) forced me to play it safe. Lots of heavy eye contact, a little toss of the hair (that famous attention-grabbing move of women the world over), slight pout to the lips (damn, where's the lipgloss when you need it?), a little spark of satisfaction when he looked at our table. The boys were frowning in disapproval (of course, it's alright for them to indulge in such games, but I have to be protected. Bah. Hypocrites.), but they did concur that he was looking in our direction quite a bit. The final triumph,I could see, was about to come about, since he had just risen from his table and was coolly sauntering over. I was getting ready to play it coy, maybe accept a drink and haggle over whether or not I'd give him my phone number, when he stopped in front of my friend N.K. and said: "Do you want to dance?" Lesson 3: acquire gaydar, or gay radar. Really. It helps.

While not every person is a willing participant in the game, it does tend to suck you right in. Pretty soon, you'll find you're even checking out men with your mom. Of course, this is a little...er...what's the word...different. Mom and I were at the CCI once, ostensibly swimming but in actuality checking out the ample goodies on display. I spotted a specimen that redefined the term six pack, and was telling mom in hushed (yes, I had finally learned to whisper) tones just how attractive I found the physique laid out a few chaise lounges away. Flash forward a few days, and we were at the CCI again, meeting mom's friends for lunch. The next thing I know, in walks Mr. Hotbody, and, wonder of wonders, he's the son of one of mom's friends. So we're introduced around, and my mom (dear sweet soul) winks at me and says to the guy "Oh, it's you...my daughter couldn't stop gushing about your...what did you call it, sweetie? Six-pack? Yes, that's right. Wow, you must really work out a lot." Lesson 4: Tell your mother nothing. NOTHING.

With the help of these few lessons, I hope others will be as enlightened as I am to the ways of this sometimes treacherous, often perilous, always entertaining game. All the best to everyone out there - to the men, may you find women whose drinks won't stain when thrown at you. To the women, I hope you're more attractive than your male friends.

My Only Thought

...Is that this time tomorrow, I’ll be in Bombay!! As N.M. soooo sweetly and soooo graciously said: “No sleep, no peace, no rest, no alone time…no sleep!” I can’t wait!!

Plus, H.T.’s getting married! Chronicles on one of our own getting shackled…er,hitched… to follow (sure to be filled with biased observations due to my enduring Peter Pan complex).

BUT! Bombay!!

I Get By With A Lil' Help From My Friends...

There was a time in my life (mid-teens) when lines were clearly drawn, boundaries devoutly demarcated: friends are friends, best friends are best friends, potential love interests are fleeting, and NEVER the twain shall meet. These distinctions were important back then, because all my best friends were hormonal teenage boys who had an alarming propensity to suddenly develop this mysterious thing called “feelings” for me. I eventually worked out that these “feelings” coincided with me hitting puberty and developing a decent-sized rack, so I managed to maintain a healthy sense of skepticism and didn’t let the attention go to my head (much).

Around the time I hit 20, I had a stellar group of friends and we were all quite grounded in our love for each other – it was there, it was solid, it was non-negotiable (much to the chagrin of several over-possessive girlfriends and boyfriends who came and went). If there was a time when any of us within the group suspected we might be developing feelings for each other (and you throw a group of 20-somethings together, it’s kinda inevitable), we dealt with it with a minimum of fuss and drama – things NEVER worked out (sad, but true), so we quietly went back to being best friends and promptly resumed the ridiculously comfortable camaraderie we had always shared. I don’t know whether this was a sign of the maturity we possessed (I SERIOUSLY doubt it) or simply the fact that it was ingrained in our psyches that no relationship (or lack thereof) could ever possibly be as satisfying as the friendship we shared.

I often wonder why things didn’t go better. There have been several men and women in the group who have, on occasion, suddenly seemed to wake up to the fact that maybe they felt more than just friendship. But despite knowing each other for eons, knowing every thought and feeling and PMS-induced moodswing, things would invariably go awry. When you’ve known someone for years and years, does that make it easier or more difficult to fall in love with them? I wonder if getting into a relationship when you’ve already seen the frog’s warts is a bad idea…those relationships where you keep discovering things about each other seem to work out better than the ones where you’ve seen each other in tattered boxers, or without make-up, or witnessed each others’ severe morning breath on overnight trips to Pune and Goa.

It’s been about a decade now, and all of us are in our mid-to-late 20s, scattered across the globe; some dating, some engaged, some blissfully single and some scarred by past relationships. Distance and jobs and different time zones make it difficult for us to talk everyday, but we’re all so secure in the knowledge that we love each other, it doesn’t matter. Boyfriends and girlfriends will come and go, but we’ve all stood the test of time, and bad hair days, and acne, and psychotic significant others. The days of wondering ‘what if’ about each other are over, because we’ve settled into our comfortable grooves…furniture, if you will…I’m the bean bag in front of the tv, N.M. is the sofa in the corner, D.S. is the recliner over there…etc. We’ve confidently declared that we’re all pooling in our money to buy a huge house so we can all move in together – something big enough to give each of us our own space, but small enough to keep us close together. And, of course, we’ll all be going into the same retirement home in our 80s, where we’ll terrorize the staff by having wheelchair races in the corridors.

Childish fantasy? Sure. Unrealistic? Maybe. Naïve? Definitely.

But it keeps us going. It’s our version of happily ever after.

Warning: Sappy Post Ahead

I've never really celebrated Raksha Bandhan (for the uninformed and the non-Indians: a Hindu festival celebrating the bond between brothers and sisters) with my brother Mahesh… my family isn't given to really celebrating a lot of religious/symbolic occassions, which has always suited me just fine! But every year, I like to take stock of my memories relating to my baby brother, and as much as I know he rolls his eyes and sighs and huffs, he enjoys it too :)

- I remember being 8 years old and having my parents tell me that we were going to have a baby in the house soon. I also remember asking if I could have a terrier puppy instead.

- I remember telling my friends about it, and saying I wanted a little brother. I also remember their sage advice at the age of 8: God works in mysterious ways, so ask for a sister, and He'll give you a brother.

- I remember Dad collecting me from Smallie's house after school and taking me to hospital to see Mom and then you: scrawny, yet bigger than all the other babies; squinting in the glare of the hospital lights and so impossibly adorable that it hurt my chest to look at you.

- I remember sneaking into Mom and Dad's room every night to look in at you and make sure you were still breathing. Of course, this turned out not to be such a good idea when I had chicken pox and passed it on to you at the tender age of 2 months!

- I remember how you'd only crawl backwards; run full tilt but never walk; eat only chicken-stew and rice till you were 6; fight with me only about what to watch on TV and who got the last can of Coke (the parents got us our own TVs, but there's STILL never enough Coke!); come to me with your homework and report cards before going to Mom; ask me about friends and boyfriends but remain unfazed when I teased you…the good, calm, quiet boy as opposed to me: often loud, occassionally obnoxious, rare but explosive temper.

- I remember you just waiting to grow…first to be taller than Mom (easily achieved at age 11), and then me (age 14) and finally Dad (you're 17 and 6'4" now, a good 4 inches taller than him. Happy?).

- Now every day there are new things to file away in my brain's memory box labeled "Mahesh" : you being so excited (but playing it cool) about being on the basketball team; your first kiss; the first time I took you out with my friends (who were dating and VERY affectionate….oh, your scandalized expression!). You're the sort of baby brother who asks "Who are you going out with?" and "When will you be back?" and "Is THAT what you're wearing?" - something even Dad never did! And then you quietly open the door for me at 3 in the morning when I forget my keys.

- I saw you browsing through college admissions sites the other day, and I ruffled your hair and just walked past…then went and sat in my room and pulled out old photo albums: the embarassing ones, with you as a baby with your head sticking out of the bucket you had climbed into; the time I put a whole bunch of flowered clips in your hair; the time we went to Jaipur and you and I were squinting into the sun, pulling funny faces at the camera. There's pictures of me carrying you, and making faces at your smelly diaper, and us jumping into bed to watch Jonny Quest together. There's you with the cast on your arm when you broke it: how you enjoyed bashing me over the head with that plaster! There's pictures of you sitting on my lap when you were tiny enough to carry, and there's ones of me sitting on yours because now I'm the tiny one.

I must be PMSing. I'm actually crying as I write this. Bah.

I love you, you doofus.

The Beauty and The Prick

One of my best friends, D.S., is this beautiful, amazing, kick-ass, intelligent and fascinating woman (and if I sound like a girl with a crush here, bear with me, I love the chick) and yet she still manages to get dicked over by a guy who's so blatantly not worth it that it boggles the mind.

What pisses me (and our other friends back in B'bay) off is that we should've SEEN it somehow…instinctively just known that he was an idiot. Where was my cynicism? Where was N.M.'s go-slow-approach? Where was A.H.'s caution and sixth sense? But no, when we met him, we were ALL taken in by the niceness, the goofy sense of humour, the effort (endearing) to get on our good side because D.S. is important to us, and we're important to her, no negotiations there. One of our own had found love, found someone who could be an extenstion to our group, instead of taking her away from us. So we tried, and he tried, and we all got along and cue the Disney happy-ever-after music, yes? No. After 3 years of togetherness and overcoming parental objections and age differences and insurmountable odds and discussions of marriage, it goes like this: The Prick ends it with a phone call, announces his engagement to someone else on facebook, and D.S. is…actually, D.S. is being stronger than I would ever have thought possible.

I think this post is going to be in honour of D.S. actually - I don’t think I talk enough about my friends, just blather on about myself. But I love showing off about D.S. When she got a 730 on her GMAT and got into one of the best B-Schools in the world, I couldn’t wait to tell EVERYONE…I'm so proud of her! She's lost over 20 kgs of weight over the past few years through sheer determination and (in my lazy-ass opinion) an unhealthy commitment to the gym; as a result she looks sensational in the black wrap dress I saw her in last weekend. She's topped most of the exams she's ever written, or at least cleared them with flying colours (and I always wondered what that meant. What do colours flying have to do with exam marks?). She's witty and incisive and funny and snarky and has men drooling like puppy dogs at her stiletto-heeled feet. And, as I said before, she's incredibly, unbelievably strong.

This is a woman who was there for me when I went through a hideously bad break-up. She cried for me because I couldn't (or didn't know how to, or wouldn't give the guy the satisfaction of seeing me) cry. She went out partying with me pretty much every night of the week if I wanted to (because loud music meant neither she nor I would think about how me breaking up with my boyfriend irrationally led to her losing one of her good friends too). She let me hold her hand in a death-grip when I saw my ex with another woman, basically confirming everything I'd worried/feared/grown paranoid about for 3 years (makes me wonder if 3 is some sort of ill omen…I know of waaaaaay too many relationships going kaput at the 3-year mark. Actually, thanks to her, H.T., N.M. and A.H., I think I managed to get through the whole post-break-up period relatively unscathed and have turned out as normal as I am right now (which most people will testify isn’t much!) Coincidentally, H.T., N.M. and A.H. were there for her too after The Prick ended things with her. We love you guys, have we ever said that?) This is a woman who polished off an entire saucepan of rasperry-jello-and-apple-vodka (we were trying to make jello shots, but there were no ice trays) with me while we watched 'The Grudge' at A.H.'s place in Pune, and then fell about laughing with me 'cuz I wouldn't go to the bathroom alone. Hell, she's put up with my vampire and Coke addiction for 8 years now, and that drives most people insane!

I'm rambling….I tend to do that when I feel strongly about something. What I'm trying to say is this: I need her to read this and know, know with absolute certainty, that there are people who love her, and there will be people who will see her for how truly sensational she is. People so far better than The Prick that it will boggle her mind, because she will wonder at the 3 years she absolutely wasted on him when there was something so much better out there. And until then, if she insists on being too big a person to hate The Prick....

...I'll do it for her.

Venereal Disease (Well, okay, no, but it sounds more interesting than 'Valentine's Day')

I have never celebrated a Valentine’s Day with a significant other (even when I was dating, there would invariably be fights on either the 13th or the 14th itself (ah, tempestuous romance of college days, how I miss thee. NOT.). But the day is still pretty damn special for me. Okay, I’ll admit, it’s so blatantly commercial that it’s difficult to see where the romance begins and the promotional schemes end. And honestly, if you’re a woman and you’re PMSing and you’re – god forbid in these hearts and flowers times – single (gasp!), the copious amount of red-heart-bedecked store fronts and ultra-mega-gigantic billboards shouting “Valentine’s Sales” and “Two-for-One Lovers’ Discount” get to be a bit much. Well, when I say a bit much, I mean only in the hitting-in-the-head-with-a-bulldozer sort of way.

Sour grapes, you say? To which I heartily rejoin: Nahhhh. Sour grapes is this woman I know, who’ll walk down Marine Drive in the evening and scowl at all the poor privacy-deprived couples and mutter about taking them out with a bazooka. Oh, or this other person I know who’ll walk into every greeting-card store and not-so-surreptitiously stick all the heart-shaped balloons with a pin and then gleefully proclaim “I broke 75 hearts today!” Um, note to self: must find new friends’ circle. But really, what I don’t get is how people don’t see the day for the corporate-sponsored malarkey that it is. I know it’s been said a million times before, so it can stand to be said again: Why should there be a separate day allotted to love and showing it? It’s a nice concept, I’ll grant you that – a special day set aside like any birthday or anniversary (and there’s no such thing as too many special days). But card companies and restaurants and TV and movies have turned it into this whole huge deal, to the point where I actually know people running around in a panic at the last minute because they don’t have a date for the 14th of February.

Oh, and since I have chronic foot-in-mouth disease, to these people I said: “So?” And boy, did I ever get reamed out. “Don’t you have a romantic bone in your body?”; “Do you want to die an old maid?”; “Don’t you know how important the day is?”; “Don’t you know how much fun it is getting all those gifts?”; “Do you WANT to be a lonely 80 year old with 47 cats?” and the like. I dunno, really. I’ve always rather liked cats, and as for dying an old maid…well, I really doubt one Valentine’s Day is going to tip the scales either way on that probability! As for the gifts….ok, yeah, I’m losing out there. But damn it, I’m a woman of the 21st century and I earn my own money (albeit not much), so I can buy my own damned Swarovski crystals (the teeny-tiny ones)!

I think what prompts most people to want to celebrate the 14th of February (aside from all the nummy chocolates and the cosy hand-holding) is the fear (or maybe despair) of being alone when most of the world is paired up. I said earlier that Valentine’s Day is a special day like any birthday or anniversary, but unlike those days, which are celebrated by family and friends and large groups of loved ones, Valentine’s Day is a day for two. It’s a more intimate day, a more exclusive one, and third wheels are not encouraged to tag along. It’s very firmly a Couples Thing. And, deep down, there’s a lot of people out there yearning to be part of a Couples Thing, especially on the 14th, when the Couple Vibe is on display EVERYWHERE. They want to walk down halls with fingers intimately clasped and play footsie under restaurant tables and gasp with delight at gifts received and seal the day with a kiss (or, okay, more).

So the thing is, what I miss today isn’t a significant other. This day is normally special for me because in Bombay it always meant going to Leo’s or out for dinner with the entire bunch and groaning over the fact that EVERY place insisted on playing “Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love For You” and “Everything I Do” at least 6 times in succession. It meant looking at couples fighting and smirking to ourselves that we were footloose and fancy free and, most importantly, free to ogle without recrimination, even on this, the much-touted Most Hallowed of All Days of Love (pardon the oodles of sarcasm). It meant eventually piling into someone’s car and sitting by Marine Drive or Worli Seaface at 3 in the morning, speculating about what we’d all be doing and where we’d be, and who we’d be, 10 years from now. It meant a very real, and very visceral fear (confusingly laced with a little anticipation) that maybe next year, one of us wouldn’t be there, because we’d have found someone (someone else, someone not us) and abandoned our little ritual for the wonders of Valentine’s Day. Not romantic, no, not at all, but special in more ways than anyone can quantify.

And okay, now I’m in Cal, and we’re all running up our phone bills (yeah, no more Swarovskis for me...sigh) calling to and from Bombay and Delhi and Calcutta and Dubai and Sydney. But there’s still the smirking and the speculating and god, tonnes of catching up (and all without the sappy songs in the background!). And fine, even if it isn’t 3 in the morning in someone’s car on Worli Seaface? It’s still pretty damn special.