Namesake: Journeying to be Brave

This is a tribute to friendship forever. You were my namesake, Nandini. Both sets of parents searched, discovered, and adopted it from the same play by Tagore called Red Oleander or Rakta Karabi in Bengali. We were destined to create happiness in people’s lives or break any spell of alienation. Our pet names also rhymed – Papu and Mitu. We never stopped seeing each other since we were six and seven years old. We were brought up in the same high-rise building beside a city bridge in Calcutta. Your residential flat was on the 8th floor and mine was on 9th. The flats were the same shape, size, and décor because our parents embodied similar principles and leftist ideologies. The photos hanging on the walls in our living rooms were of Marx and Engels. But when our mothers died in 1986 and 1987 their photographs also hung beside the philosophers. We were almost inseparable except during the school routine. Sometimes we did not give respite to each other, creating claustrophobia. Parents were happy and, on a few occasions, especially during our festive periods could not separate us even during the nights. We giggled, created our own worlds of imagination, nostalgia, and boats to immerse them in the rain waters in our flood-prone region.

I can still see you sharing some last-minute secrets about our partners on the balcony of my uncle’s home in Bombay. After that you vanished. You never returned from your Pune trip to your boyfriend’s house where you went to resolve some issues with him and his family. When I heard the news of your fatal accident or callous release of life, I couldn’t believe my ears. At least for a few years since, all my sensory nerves had become numb. You always haunted my existence. At first you haunted me in each nightmare – I couldn’t find peace and thought to solve the mystery behind your death. However, your family did not like the idea. I resisted the urge to dig deeper. This is the first time that I started to dig your kindness instead, the fun time we spent together, and our challenging memories again after the long pause.

Playing informal games like creating scenarios where we were Sherlock Holmes or Miss Marple. Evenings during power cuts in the passageways were filled in with taking part in childhood storytelling, disagreements with other friends, selecting music for each other, and discussing politics after returning from the University. This regular routine could never bore us. We shared our love stories, our sorrows related to break-ups and our happy journeys through feminism, various adventures in rural life, and volunteering to build slum schools made us quite strong comrades.

You were a brilliant student, and I was mediocre, but we never considered academic merit in our friendship. You always were by my side when I struggled to cope with my rough situation after my mum’s untimely death or when our political careers miserably failed due to toxic party culture. We spent the summer holidays on each other’s terraces and balconies. You taught me how to navigate the situation that my father and brother had mental health issues which affected my life and external family matters. We influenced each other by joining different study circles.

Your courage to resist patriarchy in real life always amazed me. Your analytical skill to dissect different life episodes soothed each nerve of my brain and body. You sustained my anarchic life by keeping some balance inside my rebellious, unruly, clumsy nature, always healing my wounds. I am unaware of my role in your life regarding creating semblance when you faced troubles and tried to break shackles.

Do I only miss you? Yes! I see you in all my dreams. I see you chatting, talking about your boyfriends and husband. You were sad about all the ill-treatments and shared your pathos and genuine teardrops. Rebels always must face consequential challenges and scorns from the society. You influenced me to think outside the box, making the world a place and space for everybody.

Together we discovered that radical political life can also be corrupt and judgemental. We protested this and were ousted together from the party. We remained awake rest of the night in each other’s company. You held my head and hands strongly, whenever I tried to cry, you caught hold of my tears and stored them in a wooden box. For the whole night we listened to inspiring songs by Joan Baez repeatedly.

The next day you took me through a channel of freezing water as I lied back in a salon’s chair. The hairdresser shampooing my hair under your instructions. A scent, a memory, and a permanent visual were formed where we got stuck.

You were my bridesmaid and shared my joy when I gave birth to my child. You critiqued my disorganised life – your frustrations and Bombay journeys pained me. The party you described where your boyfriend from your extramarital turmoil snatched your dignity was reported to me by your colleagues.

Every day after your horrible death, I imagined we could have spent our days in this way and that way. Your beautiful smile, your intelligent and sad eyes suggest you deserved more. I have two complaints toward you – why did you always try to subvert whatever came in front of you and tolerated the boyfriend’s toxic behaviour? On the last day you said you would sell all your ornaments to win the poisonous soul of the man for whom you might even give your own life. I need to know what happened on that night.

I am incisively curious to know what happened to my friend that she lost her life, or did she lose her incessant war against cliched societal norms which we started together. My memory is blurred as to when did you come to connect with my terrors, mourning, and worships after my child was born in the palatial in-law’s house.