CODENAME : JEANS 13

I had met her some five years back in my previous organisation through a common friend and we clicked from the moment we had met. She too was from my native place and her birthday was just a couple of days before mine. Being of the same age and star-sign, we had lots of things common in our natures and in our likes and dislikes. And we used to hang around together most of the times, especially to all our nocturnal parties after work, our three common guy-friends in tow.

She was just like me--impulsive, headstrong and very bluntly to the point. She feeded my number on her mobile as 'MY ASSAMESE FRIEND' and I feeded hers as 'JEANS 13', though I strongly believe now that feeding her name as 'XENA-The Warrior Princess' would have been more appropriate, her real name being JEENA.

She's a totally BINDAAS person and literally a human-rash of a friend to me, who wants to keep abreast of every latest thing happening in my life. She would need every painstaking detail about every single one of my boyfriends or dates--where we went, what we ate, what we talked about, how many times he blinked, EVERYTHING! (But I don't mind it, because it's sometimes nice to share these kind of stuff with your close friends and have them involved in your life's happenings.) After I'm done choking out every grudging detail, she'll proceed to tell me what I said right, what I did wrong, what she thought I should have done and what I must absolutely do the next time. Most of the times there would be grains of truth and genuine concern in what she says. But sometimes when I'm not feeling my polite self, I would go, "Sod off B**CH, Puhleeez. That's a load of crap" and hang up. Of course she is more likely to return me the favour twice as much at every possible opportunity after that. Very seldom but there are times when she asks for my advice but more often than not, she would tell me the gory details of her ventures. But if I don't completely agree with what she's saying or tell her like I truely feel like it is, she would absolutely lose her cool and she'll go on a rant about how wrong I am and that I don't know anything and that I'm always trying to take someone else's side. She sometimes even goes to the extent of accusing me of being judgemental or being jealous of her. But most of the times I take it in a good spirit.

Incidentally, such an incident happened just a few months back before our birthdays. She was very annoyed at a certain situation, and when I tried to show her the picture as it seemed to me, she could not take it and slammed the phone down on me. Next morning she sms-ed but somehow things got very ugly and obviously, I couldn't stop myself from adding some of my own venom. We had a bitter cat-fight through sms-s as I was about to sit for an examination and we ended up showing each other our bitchi-est sides. My relationship with her suddenly seemed to be a real chore if I had to mind what I am saying to her, all because of her fragile ego and her incredible self-absorbance and annoying sensitivity. So we stopped talking to each other. We did not even call each other up on our birthdays, we were both so mad at each other then. Her birthday comes first, so I wished her through an e-card. She did exactly the same thing. This got me more annoyed because she did not even come up with anything original. She was still copying my act. Then nobody said anything and we both went to a deep freezing zone.

This Diwali, she made the first move. By then, I was missing her-- being with her and sharing our spicy life-stories, and I tried to figure out why we had gone to such a bitter extent with such a simple difference of opinion. On the eve of Diwali however, she wished me through an sms to which I replied back on a light note which I'm sure must have brought a smile on her face (or atleast that was what I intended). I sms-ed trying to initiate conversations and how to broach the topic and also prepared myself for a brush-off. But with re-inforced positive feelings that I still had about our friendship, she must have found it difficult to resist my overtures. Neither of us apologised or said sorry till we met last weekend, but I did encourage her to mouth the string of her favourite abuses to me when we first spoke over the phone and returned the favour with pleasure.

Thus, the good cheer thawed the differences that had cropped up between the two of us, and it seemed like the festive time was the best time to get my buddy back in my life again...