T

At 21 , fresh out of college, wide eyed and rose spectacled, I left home (not in a huff;) , to live and work, on my own, in the big bad ole city .Like many before me, the experience made me grow up (my parents might disagree) ,spread my wings, broaden my horizons, and exchange the rose tinted glasses for occasionally jaded ,but mostly clear ones. During this time , I lived as what is rather optimistically known as a PG (it was more like I was paying a series of snooping ,generally frustrated, middle aged "aunties" to step-mom me ;). Two and a half years ,and as many PG digs later, I was the veteran of many a room mate, some nice, a few who are best described as female,bi-pedal members of the canine species, and three who were more like sisters than roomies :) This blog is about how I met the last of the trio, and since she might not take kindly to being named , I'm going to call her T for now , so here goes-

One cold winter Sunday morning , PG "auntie" (better known by an unprintable nick name;), called me downstairs to meet a potential room mate and show her around the "palatial" room that I was living in. So down I went wondering why auntie had called me downstairs instead of barging in as usual when she wanted to show the room to someone...(Had I managed to train her after all ;)...Three hopeful flights of stairs later, I came face to face with the reason for her unusually homosapien manner. Perched on the edge of the best (least gaudily carved) sofa in the drawing room, was this very pretty ,ultra hip looking ( chic silk kurta on jeans with a nose stud, double-pierced-quadruple-ear ringed ears , zillion jingling bracelets on both wrists, expensively perfumed, with a loaded-looking-boy-friend-in-attendance...) girl/woman. My first thought -OH NO!! AIRHEAD SNOB ALERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!... prompted the rather cool, first words to T , "Hi, I am Mini". Her equally cool response did nothing to switch off my internal snob alert.

Anyway, she moved in that evening, locked herself in the bathroom with her mobile, and spent the next hour grousing to someone ( possibly the BF) about the dump with the ice queen roomie he'd forced her to move in with. What she didn't know was that the physical boundaries of the bathroom were as soundproof as a sheet of paper! Neither of us really acknowledged the other's existence after that .

The next evening I came back from work to find my rather neat but boring room warmed with lots of yellow and orange cushions, a lamp or two, some wrought iron knick knacks and the odd mirror, with a rather subdued looking T sitting on the bed. Since she'd also taken the trouble to pretty up my side of the bed, I decided that a tentative, Hi, how was your day was in order, to which I expected a slightly thawed , non-committal response....What I got instead was a flood of tears which in turn prompted an instantaneous melt down and left me sitting down next to her with an arm around her shoulder ( this is why many a weepy movie producer has hit the jackpot by targeting a mostly female audience ;) Since she was incoherent for the next few minutes, a few fantastic reasons for her outburst came to mind, notably a squabble with the resident tyrant and/or BF....so while I was thinking up appropriate soothing responses to give when she ran out of
tears, she put an end to my agony aunt aspirations by showing me her bleeding ear caused by a snagged ear-ring and an almost ripped off toe nail...both of which had apparently happened in quick succession about an hour before I came home.

Two hours and a trip to a nearby hospital later, both of us were laughing over our initial reactions to each other....and somehow, even though we had very little in common we became the kind of friends who can rely on each other for a hug or a kick in the rear end, as and when required :D

PS: My internal alarm wasn't that far OFF, she isn't a snob ( far from it!) , but sometimes she's a big dope (note that's different from Airhead ;) , Infact one of the few things we have in common is that she would probably say the same for me .....Don't kick me too hard T if you ever read this ;)