About a Girl

Ours began as a relationship of convenience. As most – all – childhood friendships are wont to begin. Diana Penty was my original friend-of-a-friend and I, hers.

Said common friend was our unspoken navigator in the socio-political minefield that is fourth grade at an all-girls’ convent school. We regarded each other with the shy acknowledgement of sidekicks, taking care not to find ourselves alone in each other’s awkward company. Until Common Friend shipped off to another school just as we were about to be thrust into the grim world of secondary education, with its terrifying implications of trigonometry and training bras. We would need to go this together.

Neither of us is quite sure precisely when we turned best friends.  

I may never have said more than the odd word to her before, but how different she was never escaped me. I now feel Diana always carried a measure of natural celebrity. One of those people, who, it is not immediately apparent why, seem to have a stronger force field than others. Diana was always at least a head taller than everyone in our class, and folded her reedy frame into a self-conscious stoop throughout school. There were the thick, shiny jets of blacker-than-black hair locked into a hurried ponytail, big, intelligent almond eyes behind nerdy glasses, pert nose, mouth full of steel. And
a gentilesse coupled with just the touch of nonchalance (a trait I have tried to imitate ever since we met) one does not think to expect from a 10-year-old.

In contrast, my near-sentient mass of curls, pubescent weight gain and Goan Catholic intonations (my favourite word, “itsims”, turned out to be the rather dull “it seems”) felt anxious and ungainly.

I was self-conscious, and a little proud, of how quickly we became inseparable. We spent most of those first teenage years in each other’s company (of which at least one was spent almost exclusively giggling). Every day we would be dropped to St Agnes High School in her white Maruti 800. We were partners if we’d lucked out that year and landed in the same class, spent our long and short breaks together if we hadn’t and walked back together after school, usually running the last few metres to her house to make it in time for Small Wonder (she had cable; there were no downsides to this friendship).

By 13, we were like a single entity – DianaCheryl CherylDiana. Never expected anywhere without each
other, shuttling between her house for the fluffy Le Patisserie goodies her refrigerator was invariably stocked with, and mine for the fish curry – my mother can take full credit for introducing her, a then staunch chickentarian, to piscine joys that remain with her to this day. She taught me to rollerblade “along the lines of the floor tile…WATCH OUT!” My brother was our brother and her dog, Ruff, a derisive Lhasa Apso, was our…no he wasn’t, he was most definitely her dog. “Ruffu, ruffu!” she’d use her baby voice and he’d let go of his general contempt for the world for several minutes to turn into an adoring, writhing mass of puppy while she scratched his belly.  

We talked endlessly – no sooner would we part ways after school, than we’d get right on the phone to each other – about a lot of things: When we would get our first waxes, what we would do if either of our ailing fathers suddenly died, who and how our boyfriends would be, should be (“hope he’s not a crier, eww!”), when our music careers would take off (Mariah Carey’s ‘Hero’ was our anthem, our by now 15-year-old souls thrumming with lofty emotion each time she let out one of her high-frequency yodels). We recorded our own talk show too, being host and guest interchangeably – the latter modelled on whichever classmate had incurred our wrath that week. Diana was shy even then, with just two of us and a tape recorder in an empty house; if someone had told her she’d be doing that on national TV a decade on, or having her face loom up on a movie theatre screen, she would have giggled and secretly thought them not very bright.

But let me not wend slowly through the chronology of our friendship of 18 years. Or how it is she’s come to be famous and how I’ve come to find myself with an assignment to write about my best friend for a national magazine. Here is Diana: The Short Version:

— She was named after Princess Diana because her mother was
a great fan of the fey royal.

— Shovelling spoonfuls of Milkmaid into her mouth is a guilty pleasure that makes it all the more tragic that she’s now lactose intolerant.

— The leanness of her frame belies the heft of her appetite. This girl can destroy a 12-inch pizza and then comfortably manage a chocolate chip cookie as big as my head. She won’t, though, not often, unlike those annoying skinny girls who want to make a point – “God, I’m just cursed with great genes.”

— She’s funny, in a droll, observational way that doesn’t need to hit you over the head with a punchline. There Diana, I admitted it. In print. You’re funny. (Just not as funny as me.)

— Diana does not enjoy talking about herself. She never has. After Cocktail’s release, she stole away to the quiet of her uncle’s turtle resort in Goa to decompress from the show-and-tell. She likes the work, she just doesn’t enjoy the fame fallout.  

— And my god, can she do patience. Paint-drying, glacial, moss-lifecycle patience. In relationships, in friendships, in work. Most tiresome, this virtue. She makes the rest of us look impulsive, reckless. Enough is being said about how she’s squandered Cocktail’s momentum, not having used it to lasso her next project. Aside from the occasional doubts, she remains unruffled as she keeps meeting producers and reading scripts, taking her time to figure what it is she’ll do next.

“What on earth are you writing about me?” she WhatsApps me right as I’m trying find an appropriate note to finish on. Do I go the hysterical “BFFs 4eva!” route or make do with a “but don’t take my word for it” disclaimer? “Hmmm,” she considers in her singular Diana way when I ask her, as though she’s turning the question over. “Say ‘She’s awesome and she changed my life forever?’” she types, and then a jettison of grinning emojis. So then, good reader, what she said.  

This story appeared in the November 2013 issue of ELLE India.   

 

Easy There, Tiger

I once didn’t date this guy who was smart, funny, had nice eyes - kind of like an Indian Paul Rudd but unquestionably straight - and who appreciated women of all shapes and sizes – Padma Lakshmi, Nigella Lawson, Lisa Ray, this girl on Twitter, the Zara sales attendant, my best friend.

At first, being the emotionally evolved, 21st century girl that I most definitely, without fail, am, I flattered myself I’d made it comfortable for him to discuss other women with me. It was natural, after all, wasn’t it? I too feel certain stirrings every time I see Daniel Craig in high def, emerging from the sea like Poseidon in a wee bathing suit. And according to the roughly ten thousand gender theses out there, acknowledging freely that you both will likely find other people hot at one time or another is the hallmark of a successful postmodern relationship. Capital, I thought, and didn’t date him some more.

A coterie of my girlfriends, assembled over mint juleps, roundly decreed that I had dodged a bullet with that particular one. However, what the precise rules were for this sort of situation elicited less of a consensus. “It would depend on just how many cute bums he was noticing, and whose,” said one. “And exactly where does my bum figure in all of this” said another. “All this healthy expression stuff gets on my nerves,” a third one said, violently up-ending her glass. “Write it in a bloody diary and shut up about it.” We all nodded.

A mother of a hangover later, a few thoughts still niggled. Had I been too sensitive? All he’d really done was been honest, too honest even. Wait a minute, I thought, suddenly cross, should I be grateful that he had ‘liked’ my friend’s rather saucy picture on Facebook, in plain view of me and everybody on our collective
lists? This time I called up the boy brigade for some answers.

“Why are all of you such pigs?” I asked conversationally. And wasn’t Indian Paul Rudd’s behaviour inexcusable? No sweeping wave of sympathy or cries of 'down with him!'’ here. “It depends,” said one carefully. “Truth is we’re noticing hot women all the time, whether we tell you about it or not. Women do it too, we’re not stupid. Total disclosure is not necessary, but it’s nice to be able to say it out loud once in a way.” “Equal opportunity leering,” another said. “If I can ogle, she can too. And vice versa.” “And anyone we both know and are likely to meet often is off limits, so no complimenting her cousin’s décolletage,” he added. “I don’t care for Paul Rudd,” finally said the one who’d been silent all this while. "Night at the Museum was awful.”

I thought about this (ate fries) - the men and women were more or less agreed on how a situation like this should play out. Rapport was important, but tact more so. And 100 percent disclosure was more often than not, bloody stupi… my eyes swung back a line. Did I just say men and women had agreed on something? They had arrived at the same conclusion all on their own? Had I just orchestrated a rare moment of harmony in the otherwise knotty fabric that is interplay of the sexes? Would Harper Collins see it that way? I said a silent prayer to Paul Rudd. 

A version of this piece appeared in Grazia India.