For Sim!

This post comes as one of many little things that make up a Birthday Gift for Sim.

Every year, when the fifth of January approaches, I find my creativity automatically goes into some kind of supercharged mode. I suddenly look around and find all these nice things that’d make nice presents, and most surprisingly, I actually seem to have money for the same! Which is all very nice and convenient, you know, cause two of the best share the 5th as a Birthday!

This year was a little different, however. For one, I was broke like I have rarely been broke before. Not that it really affected the ultimate outcome, ‘cause the old routine of money-appearing-from-nowhere to pay for the presents-which-appeared-from-nowhere thing still happened. But you can imagine, I’m sure, how it affected the initial outlook of the shopper (me).

Besides, this year I really had not even the haziest notion about the kind of gift I was looking for... so I wandered unsure outside bookshops, places selling fascinating knick-knacks, sidey looking stalls at Dilli Haat… Plus the two birthday girls weren’t too helpful when it came to this. One wanted a book which the other one planned to give her so that left me at point-non-plus. The other one asked for ‘dher saara pyar’ which is what she gets anyway, so that didn’t help much either!

Ultimately, I figured out a series of gifts for Sangee (just wait till I get to Bombay!!), and Sim actually came up with a list of things I could give her! This list included things like another picture story, which shall appear here in the next five days (as soon as I get back to Delhi and my store of pictures!), and a post dedicated to Sim (all good things about her). Of course, there are many other things I’ve lined up as a surprise for this wonderful girl, but here goes…

We met in college, like so many people do. It was a great time for me, ‘cause I was having the time of my life discovering myself. School suddenly seemed like some dream, best forgotten, for reality was what I was living out in those three years. Apart from finally studying exactly what I really wanted to, I was surrounded by people I seemed to have known forever, and I’ll never forget those afternoons in the back lawns of college, when we talked about everything under the sun, and when we really should have been learning some French!

Despite our best efforts at bunking and the temporary teachers’ best efforts at boring us to death in third year, we passed!! And suddenly we weren’t together in MA. That was a bit of a stunner, really. But hey, voila! It turned out that proximity wasn’t all that our friendship was about, much to our relief.

In fact, everyday since we met, we’ve been redefining what our friendship is all about (excluding the long weeks and occasional months when we didn’t speak on account of some or the other fight). And at the end of it all, there is still no easy way to talk about you. I mean, I could go into those long-winded descriptions using clichés, but you know I can’t, right. You’re beyond the cliché. I honestly don’t know how else to put it! Why you need to be self deprecating is beyond me, of course.

Oh oh... this is turning out to be harder than I'd thought it'd be! Let's just say that you are the best, most perfect You, and leave it at that... And while this was supposed to be the 'Happy Birthday Sim' post, it clearly isn't quite that, so I'll stop trying to use words to describe her. Words aren't everything.

Happy Birthday!!!!!!!!!!