My First Ever Friends.

Megs is my first ever friend. I don't remember when I met her - our parents say we met when I was 4 and she was 3. But I grew up with her until I was around 17, quite literally. She used to live on the ground floor, and I, on the first. Every day, she'd come up to my house, and we'd go down to play outside hers until our moms yelled at us to get back home because it was too late. The proximity of our households meant that I eventually learned her family's Kannada, and she learned my family's Marathi.

We played with beach toys on concrete and barbie dolls on our scorching hot terrace, we built homes for ants in the summer and death zones for those very ants during monsoon. I'd hear Megs calling out from below that today's a rain holiday before I even turn the news on. We uprooted small trees with our single seater cycle antics. We went to music classes together, sang in carnatic concerts together, and we always went to the local grocery store together. We were, however, a menace to our apartment community. Or so we were told.

Eventually, she moved out. Eventually, I moved out. It's probably been around maybe 6 years since we stopped being neighbours. Except she stopped being a neighbour long before that, when she just became a sibling. Now she's just a sibling who moved out. As kids, our main friendship goal would always be to "go out" and not just meet inside our apartment community. We met at a few restaurants here and there after she moved. Last year, when I was working in Mumbai, she flew over for a weekend to visit me. Tomorrow, she leaves for the US.

Looking back, I realize how crazy it is to have a friend know you since even before you knew yourself. And to know that that friend is still around, still just as invested, still just as up-to-date with my life as before is not something too common, I now find. After all these years, I dont think there's ever going to come a time when we'd fall out of touch. With that assurance, I say bye to you megs. Godspeed and bring back those dollabillz :)