It is difficult to write about one particular best friend when all your friends are your best friend. And it is even more difficult when that best friend is also your cousin because almost all of my (first) cousins are very close to me 🙂
The best friend I am going to write about is my cousin whose name is Nutan. We call her Ilu because when we were little there was a trending Bollywood song “Ilu Ilu” It was my grandpa’s idea (I think) to call her Ilu 😀 I like that name and sometimes I call her by that name in public and embarrass her. But that’s what best friends do, right?
Agewise, she is only one-year younger than me but I always felt like she is the elder one. She has a very charming personality. I don’t know anyone from our family who is annoyed by her. Even my mother, who is known for being very strict towards children, has a soft corner for her. But that doesn’t stop my mom from scolding her 😛 She is smart, intelligent and always one step ahead of me in her thoughts and choices. And also in the TV series that we watch. She is a very likable person. She has a lot of fan followers right from her school days. I take a lot of pleasure in saying that we are best friends!
I don’t know how we became best friends. I remember spending most of my vacations with my other cousin. Perhaps that’s why my other cousin is more like a sibling than a cousin, to me. The earliest memory I have, that depicts our friendship is when we were 12 or 13 years old and I used to call her on the landline in the afternoon. I would be alone at home and both our moms were working. I don’t remember what we discussed but we used to talk for at least an hour.
Later, we went to the same high school, we went to the same coaching class and we also joined the same work organization 🙂
We know everything about each other. Sometimes, we might not tell those things immediately when they happen, especially now that we have grown up and have become judgemental, but we do spill the beans later. I think that is OK, we need our space and we understand each other.
We have grown up together especially after we began to stay together for long hours of the day. Our likes and dislikes have influenced each other. Our attitude, our thought process, the lessons we learned are almost the same. But what amazes me is, any kind of distance doesn’t change this. I can give you an example. Nutan had to go to a different city for college when I was in a different college. Once, we met each other after a long time and she had come to my place to spend that night. As usual, we were discussing movies and stuff. She told me about a movie that she had seen at her hostel and that she loved the hero from that movie. And I told her about my new favorite hero from my latest movie. Turns out we were talking about the same guy, Gerard Butler. She had seen ‘The Ugly Truth‘ and I had seen ‘300‘! Same thing happened with Ryan Goslings. She had watched ‘The Notebook‘ and I had watched ‘Half Nelson‘ 😀
Today, we both are in different foreign lands, meeting people from different places, gaining new experiences. But when we talk about it, it feels like we had same experiences. We actually speak same things together. It is weird in an amazing way 🙂
It is not that we get along on everything, but we just don’t make much fuss about it. Because there are more things we agree on than we disagree. We choose to enjoy that.
Another thing that distinguishes us, I think, is what we want from life. I want peace, she wants adventure. But our values are same, our principles are same. So we are just traveling two parallel paths towards different destinations.
There are times in the past when we have disappointed each other by our behavior. We are, after all, two different individuals. But we continue to have faith. We don’t give up on each other.
Our relation is something, we don’t have to work on. It is not going to change for any reason. We might not talk or even message for days, weeks or months. That does not change anything. Every passing day, every other conversation we have is a proof of that. We will continue to find comfort in each others presence. That’s the only thing I am sure of.
Do you also share such a relationship with your best friend? Or maybe your cousin? 🙂
I would love to hear.
Dee Talks 