Am I Good?

She was a good girl. She was my neighbour and she was also my one friend. We attended Sunday School and kindergarten together. She was an extrovert and made friends easily. She talked amiably and easily got in and out of arguments with people. Quite unlike me who was painfully shy. She also cried easily because she often fought with people over silly things and would run back home. I never consoled her which was a failing on my part. 

We played with her Tea Sets constantly either in her house or mine. Sometimes she ran home crying because one of my cousins bullied her. Once she was done crying, she’d come back and we’d play house again. We didn’t talk about it and she never asked me to pick sides. It was always her fight with my cousins and I acted like I was not involved but she was there only because of me. I suppose I failed her there as well.

We were kids then. And we grew up apart. I moved around a lot because of my dad’s job and then later for my education. She stayed home, met a boy and got married to him. She miscarried one time and never got pregnant again. She got divorced and didn’t move back home to our neighbourhood. I started hearing stories about her. They were not good stories. They talked about alcohol and drug abuse and walking the streets. I never reached out because I didn’t think we were still friends. I know I failed her again.

We met only once as adults. She came to my house. She was mostly skeleton at that point. I was horrified at the sight of her. I hope the horror didn't show in my face at least. She told me that remand home was breaking her and that the people running the home were torturing her. She asked me for just enough money to go to her father’s house in another village. She rambled on about delusional things that made no sense and stories I knew were lies. I listened in ever-growing horror and as always, since we were kids, I never said anything. Her grandmother told me if I gave her money, she was going to buy drugs. So we ate food together and I gave her my sweater that she liked, but not money. That was the last time we talked. I didn’t – still don’t – know what she needed from me but I think I didn’t give her it. I definitely failed her.

The last time I saw her, she was banging on the door of her family’s house and although I would later hear unsavoury stories about that scene that plays in my head often, I will not repeat it. She died in a police station holding cell, overdosed on some hard drugs, I'm told. I was in Champhai at the time and my sister laid down flowers on my behalf on her coffin. Her grandmother gave me one of the mourning shrouds. The puan is untouched and sits in the bottom of my trunk because it makes me feel all the weight of the times I have failed her.

I don’t know a lot of people who have died. She is too young for me to talk about her in the past tense. She was a girl who talked about Calvanism and the first person in my life who talked about predestination, as she had heard her grandmother tell her. She often told me about how there were people who were destined to go to heaven and those for hell. That there was not a lot we could do about it. My parents aren’t denomination-minded and never talked about Calvinistic teachings. I'd thought it was fascinating. My cousins, of course, said that was bull. I never defended her. Me failing her and her still showing up was a tenet of our friendship, it seems.

I guess I never had her back. And every time I remember her, I still don’t know how good a person I really am. She remains today the mirror I hold up to myself when I start to think I am a good person. Am I good? I will never know.

Birthday Twins and Advices

It is a great statistical possibility, considering there are 8.1 billion of us roaming around in this old earth of ours and only 365 ¼ days in a year, but it is always a happy coincidence when you meet people who share your birthday! It is even more fascinating when these people are close relatives – both consanguineal and affinal, actually also geographic. For me, it is this case with a blood relative and a kin by marriage who live quite close to where I lived, even now still in the same city. One is my mother’s elder sister. The other is my mother’s cousin’s husband.

For some people it might mean three birthday cakes. But we don’t do that very much in my family, except for rare occasions. We’ve never invited each other for cakes or parties. We’ve never sent each other presents. We just acknowledge that we share this birthday, one day before the birthday of Harry Potter, in fact. Although that last bit is only appreciated by me.

My birthday-twin aunt and uncle have each given me tons of advices over the years. My uncle was also my first school principal so advices were general and easy to come by for him. My aunt just likes to make quick decisions in general.

My birthday-twin uncle’s advice is to have integrity and principles. He always says that you will only value hard-earned money. I have extended this to my own life code that no one values money which is not rightfully and deservedly earned. You may enjoy money and the Lord knows how wonderful it is to enjoy what money can give you, but easy money just does not carry the same worth and dignity that your hard-earned money does.

My birthday-twin aunt’s advice? If someone punches you, punch them back.

I’ve also received sound advice from a birthday-twin colleague: always carry a spare pair of glasses with you when you travel. This is actually very sane advice which I recommend to everyone who can’t see very well. It is very real danger when you can’t see and even more painful if you’re in an alien location. Also, helps with motion-sickness, I believe. The glasses, I mean. Which, come to think of it, if you’re thinking of glasses you click with someone, might not help with the nausea. I am talking here of spectacles, my people.

One birthday-twin from my college days (actually even the year of our birth is the same so basically my twin from another parents really), a boy from Nagaland, taught me how to hustle in Delhi’s Arjun Nagar. I don’t remember specific advices from him but from what I can recall, most of his advice could be summed up as: Be aggressive. It is a very handy advice to follow, if you can. Helped me out tons in life in general, I have to say.

Another bit of general advice but not from a birthday-twin: carry a band-aid in your wallet and a pocket-knife in your bag. I follow this (Victorinox has the best SAKs, for reference) and I swear, this has helped me out more than once. Do that, too.

A last advice as a praying Christian from a boy who is not a birthday-twin: if someone asks you to pray for them and you say yes you would, just pray for them on the spot in your head; if you’re waiting for a grand time to include them in your ‘official’ prayers, there’s a chance you’d forget. I like this. I do this now, too.

I start off in one direction and end up in another. Weird.