The Girl with the white slacks.

If it were glass flooring, it would have cracked. With full vigor, dedication and steeping intensity she was practicing dance. An outburst of energy with no rhythm and not any close to an innate dancer was my first observations about her and I first found myself getting quite irked each time she tried to swirl with music, and it wasn’t anymore because of her dance moves this time, it was her slacks. Yes, her slacks seemed to peek furtively to see us dancing to the beats of “Jaatha hai tu Kahan” from “Yes Boss”. But later she was my private comedian and my subjects of wisecracks. Soon we got done with the annual gathering or rather an official send off for our seniors and for me; it was seeing my only sister off from school and final exams.

My grownup feet now reached the stairs and corridors of high school where all the “Girlies” (nickname for all the girls in primary patented by St. Joseph’s girls) then became “young semi-matured girls”, yes I reached standard 8^th and had this lady who happened to be our class teacher and who was called Ms. Mayrose, she was very decent, composed lady in her 40’s with her matching lipsticks which synchronized with the color of her each and every outfit and not to forget her weird and peculiar style of teaching. A girl would be asked to stand and read up the chapter and that was all! Back then it was weird but now it seems quite appropriate, I mean what more explanation would one need when the all the book dealt with which king conquered which territory.

Then I bumped into the girl in white slack as she this time after nearly 9 years in school happened to be my classmate, don’t ask me where she was earlier because I don’t have answers to it either. No sooner I got acquainted and warmed up; we seemed to enjoy each other’s company and started hanging out not only in school but at home as well. An ambitious, hardworking, extremely loving and helpful and very pretty thing who touted herself as a precursor of Afghanistan and she came from a conservative, Muslim but well educated and erudite background. But to me she was the one and only best friend I ever have and her name is Arshia Sultan Gurani.