"She's here!!"
Before I could retort with a sarcastic Yes-I-Am, or, for that matter, catch enough breath to make the effort, I was ambushed by a teenage just-turned-fourteen. Gagging, and trying to keep my just-washed hair in place, I submitted to the headlock I was in, which ultimately dragged me into the house. Ears half smothered, I could hear a vague turmoil of voices screaming inside.
"Oh thank goodness you're here."
I couldn't miss the satisfaction, tremendous relief and touch of hysteria associated with the words, spoken by another familiar voice. Peeking a bit to see the speaker, all I could make out was a purple blob. I was going to protest and tell my ambusher to let me go, but she managed to beat me to it, and let my head resurface for breath. Then she grabbed my arms and squealed.
"You're finally here! We've been waiting for you for ages!"
I laughed a bit. "Yeah, I'm here Aboli."
Her face shining, she scampered into the hall to scream a bit at her other guests. I glanced at the side to see the purple blob grinning at me. I grinned back.
"Seriously, I'm actually glad you're here," Nidhi repeated, looking enormously relieved. "This is just scary. Very cute, and very ninth grade, but scary.
"It couldn't have been that bad, could it?" I asked as we stepped into the living room. Ninth grade birthday had me remembering Saee's movie party or else Nidhi's bowling bash. It didn't seem too bad. We weren't that out of touch.I almost took back what I said. Almost.
All the chairs had been occupied by boys - looking very awkward, bored and out-of-place. The sofas, on the other hand, had been stretched to their maximum capacity with girls sitting daintily side-by-side. Another thing I noticed, was that a majority of them, including the birthday girl, had worn one very pretty looking assortments of dresses; black halternecks, yellow poofy-sleeves, grey strap sundresses...the works. Suddenly, I felt suitable underdressed, in my year-old jeans, red turtleneck sweater and leather jacket. Nidhi was, of course, not much better with her purple top and blue jeans.
I looked helplessly at her, and she shrugged.
Aboli was all hyped up. "Come on and sit! We're playing a game!"
"What game?"
Just then, I spotted a nicely wrapped object sitting lifelessly in somebody's lap, and that somebody didn't look too pleased about it.
I looked up in surprise. "Passing the parcel?"
"Turth-n-dare passing the parcel," Nidhi grimaced. I looked back at the parcel. Well, this would be fun.
"I'm not playing," I declared. Nobody really cared, so I shrugged and analised my options for a seat. My eyes fell on a person sitting on a chair, more so because Aboli was very plainly pointing at him and grinning.
"You!!" I shreiked, drawing the attention of the entire lot of people. "You! I....you...my....you!"
He laughed in a kind of was-expecting-this-reaction way, and held up his hands in surrender. "Yeah, I know, calm down."
"You're dating my tuition teacher!" I screeched, "And you expect me to calm down? WHO are you? I thought I knew before!"
This exchange, of course, had Aboli cracking up completely, and Nidhi cringing at the pitch of my voice. I took no notice and pointed unwaveringly and a bit threateningly at his nose.
He laguhed some more. "How did you find out? Aboli told you right? About how I checked your biology paper?"
"Yes, she did!"
"So why're u worried? You got really good marks you know. She talks about you a lot."
In my haze of confusion and pure astonishment, I managed to find a few seconds to beam at him. Nidhi rolled her eyes and snorted.
Then I went back into hyper-mode.
"I can't believe this! I totally didn't expect Ma'am to date you. In fact, forget you, I didn't expect Ma'am to date at all! She looks so...so...."
"So...?" He was thoroughly enjoying this.
"So good girl." I finished lamely. Which was true. She wasn't old, only in her mid-twenties or something, but she looked purely angel. The type who must have been the teacher's pet, and the sweet-liked-by-all one. The Science student type. The I'll-wait-till-marriage type. A Good Girl.
Apparently not.
"Ha ha, how many good girls do we know who have dated behind their parent's backs?" Nidhi guffawed.
I ignored. Ok, so I knew many. Completely off point.
"How long have you been dating her?"
"About two or three years now," He replied.
"I met her you know," Aboli said excitedly, "She looks very sweet."
"Tell me, I'm dying to know, what's she like as a teacher?" He leaned forward, a look of curious interest on his face.
I pondered for a second. "Let me ask you something. Is she always so...the-world-is-beautiful? Bubbly? Brimming with bubblegum happiness?"
"Um...yeah, kind of."
Having found a common topic of interest, the 'older gang', as we called ourselves, induldged in very secret, important talks.
That was, until the food came.
'Tomato soup...with bread crumbs."
"You like bread crumbs?"
"You don't? Here, let me have yours..."
I smacked Nidhi's hand. "Get you hands off my bread crumbs. I was hoping you didn't like them."
Nidhi snorted. "Are you kidding me?"
We were on the sofa, inhaling our soup after having exhausted all our energy, precision and intense concentration on passing out soup bowls without spilling them. It was like a game of hot potatoes; Aboli would unnoticingly pass the bowl to me before I could prtoest, I'd quickly hand ot over to Nidhi before I could bring any harm to it or the carpet, who in turn would 'gah!' and try to balance the bowl properly, which at the end would be snatched out of her hands by a disapproving Chaitanya or Disha, who seemed to have qualified a PhD in hand-eye-coordination. Having made such tremendous efforts, and deeming it reward-worthy that we hadn't spilled anything, we had claimed our soup trophy and decided to try and fulfill another equally difficult but more amusing mission - to get the boys into anti-cootie mode.
Maybe Nidhi and I weren't the best candidates for that, but at least we had some experience in getting boys to talk. Not that we had reaped remarkable fruits; it took a year for the boys in question to really start talking. But anyhow, the boys at this party were playing with Omkar's action figures, so we thought they might be getting a tad bit bored.
"It would be easier if 'our' boys were here," Nidhi muttered. I imagined narrating this to them. They'd laugh of course, and immediately develop a whole oh-they're-such-ninth-graders-remember-when-we-were-like-that-? outlook on the situation.
"Hello?" I offered. The three boys who were thoroughly engrossed with their toy looked up blankly and stared. Out of the three, the over-friendly Chinmay Jha smiled and waved. In relief, I waved back at him enthusiastically.
"So...what's up?" Nidhi ventured. The other two boys muttered dully back. One was Sukrut, who had been in our van for a year, and the only time we'd ever hear his voice was when he'd bellow at Nidhi ever so often to shut up. The other, I was clueless about. This would be harder than I thought.
Meanwhile, the girls were amusing themselves by gossipping, fighting, and randomly giggling at nothing in particular. Seeing that we didn't have much scope for their gossip, Nidhi, me, Aboli's dad and he-who-is-dating-my-tuition-teacher indulged in our own more-mature yet equally amusing grown-up talks, out of which one topic was the apparent levels of madness one could reach within humanity.
Half an hour later, the girl who seemed to be the only one close to my level of understanding, had to leave. Preparing myself for a very girlish ordeal, I followed Aboli and her gang into her room to open presents.
Her first gift was a somewhat poofy red shirt. With matching earings. And banlges. WHich of course, Aboli tried on, after a lot of squeezing-through-the-hand.
"Oh they're gorgeous! I love it! And thanks for the bangles too, I didn't have red ones on any of my dresses!"
Sweet.
The next present was comparatively a let-dwon (for the other girls maybe, but not our Aboli). A book from Nidhi and myself. Followed by tons of Crossword gift vouchers from tons of people, and many cute cards to go with it.
Disha's present was the perfect example of my idea of what Aboli would get for her fourteenth birthday. A pink pearl bracelet with a bow on it, pink nailpolish and pink lipgloss.
Aboli held up the lip gloss to her eyes and scrutinised it. "I have the exact same lipgloss!"
She grabbed a similar tube from her table and held it up. "Oh...no, it's a different shade of pink. Thanks Disha! I love it!"
Dish beamed.
Aboli bent over it, trying to pry it open. "It's not opening."
"Here, let me do that," Dish offered. Aboli tossed it to her, and grabbed her next present. The girls started squealing as Aboli pulled out more gorgeous stuff. Dish remained oblivious to it, as she tried to patiently uncover the gloss.
I decided to observe her very closely, as a form of self-entertainment.
She had a look of intense concentration on her face. Very carefull, with all the elegance she could muster, she picked at the plastic wrapper. Her nose srunching up slightly, she picked a little harder. Letting out a flustered sigh, she started picking more, and bending over the lip gloss. I leaned in closer, drawn in by the suspense of the moment.Moments later, she emerged, a look of pure horror on her face. This was followed by a horrific scream, which made me blink and stare at her some more.
She held up a finer in disbeleif. "I chipped a nail!"
This seemed to invoke some kind of internal girl-pity, because everyone was suddenly swarming around her like she'd just cut herself. Ira, sitting next to me, looked bored.
Dish, on the other hand, looked completely shaken, and stared open-mouthed at her finger. "It's chipped! Right here, see?"
By now I had leaned in so close that I might have fallen off the chair if I had gone any further. Her nail looked perfectly fine to me, in fact, it was the most gloriously done-up nail for a schoolgirl. Some minute corner of her nail had been slightly chizzled out though, and this, I concluded, was the reason for the mass distress. Odd.
Finally losing her patience, and giving up her I'm-such-a-girl act, Aboli snapped back to her aboli-ish self and grabbed the lipgloss out of Disha's lap, clawing at it to try and get the plastic off.
"My nail is chipped Aboli!" Disha stuck her finger in Aboli's face.
Aboli eyed it. She sniffed. "Oh," she said, completely unperturbed.
This wasn't the reaction Disha was hoping for, so she turned to mother hen Chaitanya for consolance and fell with a dramatic cry in her arms. Aboli, still thoroughly unperturbed, went back to peeling off plastic. I had burst into uncontrolable peals of laughter. Sure, she could keep up the girliness for sometime, but she was genetically one of us. Sad, she was born a year late.
Anyhow, I had to leave a little later, after the girls started getting in slumberparty mode and closed the door in a flourish of flying nightdresses and hair brushes. I managed to amuse myself with Asterix, before Aboli's dad volunteered to drop me off, and I had a nice refreshing, completely random conversation with him.
Aboli's birthday was kind of like the birthday I never had - typical and spruced up with girl. Not that I want such a party, though I had fun getting in touch with my feminine side. It was fun though, and provided me with a nice laughter-inducing memory for that evening. I can't wait though, till Aboli grows older, and then we can laugh it out together. Aboli, little kid, you're getting there. Enjoy it while it lasts, and have a blast being a girl. Most of all, whether you like being a girl or not, be yourself. That's what matters.
