Can great co-workers make for great friends?

Co-workers cannot be the best of friends!

I beg to disagree.

Almost everyone around me raises an eyebrow when I tell them that I am blessed to have colleagues who are such great friends. Mind you. Not just fair weather friends. They are a bunch of colleagues who leave no stone unturned in lending a helping hand to one another whenever the need be. 

With just the right doze of impishness in us, we as a team (touchwood) cross swords with any challenge that comes our way and come out victorious. From anytime whatsapping to impromptu eye talks, unplanned hullabullo to lets-get-serious-before-the-bosses-spot-us conversations, lazying around in the beautiful countryside surroundings under the wintry sun to scraping our lunchboxes free, we share a camaraderie that is too delightful and enchanting to be penned down in words. Though all of us share a great rapport, I am closest to Meenakshi and Maninder (Mams). 

As my anytime fun mates, they are the ones who help me keep the child in me alive at my workplace. I still can't forget the recent tumultous experience we had while watching RamLeela, or should I say Goliyan ki Raasleela- RamLeela! We came out totally blown away, dejected and with splitting ear-drums, thanks to the zillion gunshots that canvassed the fabric of the movie from the beginning till end. 

A while ago, adding to the list of incidents where we muddled through madness yet again was one whatsapp conversation when Meenakshi pinged me after seeing a new display picture that I had put up. Intending to say that I take after my mom, she texted, 'You look like aunty in your new profile picture'. As if on cue, before I could pop in a reply, she almost freaked out realizing the duplicity that the message afforded and sent in a hoard of smileys along with a message that read 'Oh! I meant to say that I take after your mom. I just read my previous message and realized that it reads more like as if you have auntyish looks in the new picture'. :P

I feel at the end of the day, it is light and humourous conversations like these that pave way for great bonds, professionally and personally. I am glad I have such people around :)

Time Flies!

It seems as if it was just yesterday when you and I roamed around Chandigarh sitting pretty on our scooties, chasing dreams and weaving futures. Wee days of womanhood, 2006-2009. Early morning rendezvous at your Paying Guest accommodation in the lush green Sector-36, last minute entries in the first lecture of our respective classes, shared lunches during the free hours, long musical sessions during the in-between hours, countless rubbish gossips that lobbied the day, serious help-me-na sessions while doing our MBA preparatory assignments for Bulls Eye and of course, the wonderful heart-to-heart talks that brought us closer each minute of each day of each week.

I still remember how we never agreed on anything under the sun. We were a Fire and Ice combination. You would go East while I would go West. You would rather practice mathematical analogies while I would just cozy around with a book. You would pick white while I would blindly choose black. You would vow by tea while I would prefer coffee. You would make faces even imagining Chicken while I would go ooohing and aaaahing over Chicken wings. You would prefer just the two of us while I would always socialize heavily. You would help Mum whenever you could while I would just shirk work. And yet, when it came to being friends, somehow we always knew we would be there for each other all our lives no matter what!

Despite having decided to pursue our further studies together, as fate would have had it, you stuck by what we had decided and landed up in an MBA college in Pune while I decided to stay put in Chandigarh and go in for a Masters in English and Linguistics. Time went by so swiftly that I din't even get a chance to miss you much. I got on with my new life and you yours. You came to see me with aunty before you finally left for Pune and left me teary eyed. You brought along many pairs of beautiful earrings for me wrapped in a crumpled newspaper. Dreading your choice, I dint even feel like opening them but as surprised as one could be, I was amazed to see that were all purely My Types. Chic, blingy and colorful. It was then that I realized that perhaps, you understood me and my choices way better than anyone else. No matter how loud and  audacious you had been in ridiculing my choices all the while, but somewhere deep down, you had always known exactly what I liked and what not. Would you believe, I still wear them often. They make me feel as if you are still around blabbering away to glory while taking digs at me. :)

We have been each other around a lot ever since you moved to Delhi, unfortunately just a month after I moved back to Chandigarh. I wish you were around in Delhi during my stint there. As ill luck would have it, you chose to stay in exactly the same locality as I were. I wish we could stay together reviving the good old dreams.

Khair! As I write this post on your birthday today, I feel blessed to have you around. Not to forget, this is the first time ever that I have wished you right on time in our 8 year long association. Blame it on my poor memory or twist of circumstances, I do have my regrets on this. But I truly have a feeling that its going to be a great year ahead for you.

You always believed that I would be the first to tie the knot but today as I see things coming, I have a strong sixth sense that even before we know it, you are going to be whisked away on a white horse by a Prince Charming. I can already see it coming and may be, it is this feeling that is making me go weak in the knees.

By the way, do you really have it in you to make a shy, soft-spoken and head-tilted-down bride? :)

I am sure you do and you are going to make your guy one lucky man on the face of this earth. My best wishes are with you, today and always.

Happy Birthday, K! Have a great life.

Time flies. Period.