TPs?

Some of us discussed Focault. Others discussed fractions. And the funniest part is that these conversations were never mutually exclusive. I remember drunken singing in a bathroom at 4 in the morning. I remember lots of chocolate cake. I also remember golgappa bowls and photo-coasters. I remember walking down dark streets of vasant vihar after saying farewell to 1 out of 3, singing like the world did not matter.

And invariably I will always remember the laughing. The context changed. Amidst the red bricks at the Cafe. sprawled across corridors. Through games of pictionary. Pizza Hut and the vodka shots at TC.

There was nizamuddin. Shared bewilderment and forgetting to cover heads. There were films that were made, along with posters and presentations. There were walks in parks among bottles and bottles of erasex (that's what whitener's called right??) at 8 in the morning. There were episodes of Friends. and Charlie and the Chocolate factory and Madagascar. Midnight Maggi. There were also surprise parties that were pulled off. Our CVs bear the marks of our common interests. And our birthday gifts were invariably six months late. And it took us three years to get a photograph "where all of us have our eyes open AND are looking into the camera"!!

There was the Middle Class in Pakistan and there were numerous others.

By the end of it we knew us all. The one who got drunk the fastest. The one who was always late. The one who hated hugs, but who we co-opted. The one who hyperventilated the most. The one who hated Subway. The one who always called a spade, a spade. The one who loved Pepsi. The one who ate dirty chowmein, and the other who ate manchurian rice.

The last time we met was over glasses of wine. 6 red, one white. We discussed relationships. The mile-high club. and bookstores. and a hammock. :D

And I remember the comfort. Shared and nurtured. sought and sought-out. Things were not always smooth. 7 invariably broke up into 2s and 3s and 5s and then some. I know I messed up at places. regrets and tokenisms. egos and gratitude. nights we would remember, and those we always will.

Distance happened. Physically and otherwise. And I write this now because through layers of MAs and MScs and jobs, gmail worked. as did facebook and orkut of course (even though stubbornness and laziness ensure that ALL of us together are on neither!). There were 27 emails exchanged over fiction. There were others about Focault, I believe. There's a resurgence of meeting and conversations, I think.

There have been conversations. Some of the comfort sometimes seems missing. At other times, somewhere we know that it'll always be there (cliched?). In a conversation with SH, (and apparently all of us still have numerous staccato conversations about "us seven") we wondered if we would still run to each other, just? Without a reason? Call, just?

There is an immense sense of pride (I sound old when I say it of course!) over ideas growing in people. Over tremendous work being done. Over people who you're proud to know. And there's respect and gratitude.

And apparently we never shared a meal at Big Chill. There's where we go next girls :)

Postscript:

And i forgot to mention the names: apt and saved in phone directories.