Kavi Bar and imaginary friends.

19.8.19

A year ago when I joined work in Pune, I was uptight about a lot of things. I did not hug people, I did not mingle around much and I certainly kept to myself. Dee joined my work-place a couple of months later. We were from the same college, been part of same trail mails yet we had never met each other. 

I ended up judging Dee in my mind on her first day itself. She looked so calm and composed and beautiful and not to forget - clueless. Her introduction said that she knew 5 languages,  a point nobody in office failed to notice. On the other hand, Dee belonged to Kerala and her home was in Dubai. I don't exactly remember how we started talking but it could have been work. I remember the first week when we had to discuss work but somebody she knew had passed away and it was only fair that I let her be. I guess that worked for both of us that day.

Bonding with Dee was out of the picture because one, over the period of time she seemed like a nice person and two, I had already judged her on day 1 of office. So this actually meant going against my ethics of bonding with people I judged. Being the nice person I am, I realized that Dee actually got my sense of humor like nobody else. I could tell her the stupidest joke I came up with and it did not matter. Soon one day, we decided to go drinking. We did not really bother asking anyone else. This was the first time we were hanging out together. None of the bars were open at 7pm so we decided to go to a place both of us knew nothing about - Kavi Bar. On reaching there, it was fairly empty, except for a few men chattering and drinking. Our first reaction was if we should be there but the place looked decent so we stayed. 

This was the first time we were having a conversation beyond work. We decided on beer and chicken and loved the assortments more than the chicken. We first talked about our office, then moved to relationships and then marriage. She might not be the first person to know that I was getting married but she was the first person to know when the marriage thing did not work out. She too confided in me things which were to be kept between just the two of us. 

As time passed, I changed my place in office by moving next to Dee. Changing my place was more because of personal reasons than work. I knew I could count on her whenever I was excited, sad, had the desperate urge to share a joke, talk about my most relevant and irrelevant dreams, share stories, need to rant, talk or make random comments. She has been a part of everything. I even had my first visit to the Gynac with her. Never in my wildest dreams had I expected to have such a person around me because of the way I was - too quiet yet too random.

Dee is getting married in a couple of months and I know it's not going to be the same. I don't want her to go away but I am glad that she will be just a couple of miles away from me. Today was her last visit home, to Dubai as a bachelor and I know how she feels about it. 

"Let's go back in time and become childhood friends just randomly"
"We would have been sitting in some corner solving puzzles"
"We would have had an imaginary friend".

Funny that even after months of knowing each other, we still don't have a photograph of us together.