The Perfect Relationship

Sometimes the best, most unexpected relationships in life come from places you thought you would never venture too and people that you least expect to ever encounter, only to wonder in the end ‘ Am I seriously capable of anything remotely normal and functional?’

Of the zillion dates and relationships and random hook-ups that I tortured and subjected myself too, the most satisfying, gratifying and fulfilling relationship I have EVER had has been with my ex- roommate ‘N’. Fate brought us together in the most mysterious of ways, I had no idea she was that weird chick that never closed her blinds and walked around naked in her dorm room until I started living with her and observed some striking similarities between the two. A whole three years later she still pranced around naked in our very messy apartment, albeit minus my sense of awkwardness, discomfort and sense of initial shock. Thank you ‘N’ for making me forget my unnecessary and trite sense of modesty. You go around thinking and feeling, imagining and concocting the premise of the perfect romance that will make you truly blissfully only to much later realize that you are actually living it, ironically with someone of the same sex that unfortunately neither consider being in a relationship with or are attracted to.

So ‘N’ and I lived in semi picture-perfect domestic bliss. I cooked and cleaned; she walked the dog and brought the groceries. At the end of each day I would come home from work or class, drop my keys on the table by the door and go ‘Hey Hun how was your day?’

She picked me up from class whenever it was late; we would either listen to love lines on the radio or sing to what ever tape she had in the cassette player on our way back home as we chomped down chicken quesedias from Taco Bell. She was probably the only person I knew, that actually used a cassette player circa 2005. One day we spent hours store hopping around the city looking for a place that sold blank cassettes just so that she could make another one of those god damn mix-tapes that littered the dash board and floor of her old station wagon.
We spend hours being in the same room without saying a word to each other, blissfully occupied in our individual activities, but knowing and aware of each others presence and more importantly being comforted by it. There were no awkward silences between ‘N’ and me, just silences.

I am not ashamed to admit that she made me incredibly happy. We perfectly balanced each other out, my hyper, over-worked and over-anxious self needed someone laid back, happy and content like ‘N’ around to remind me of all the good things in life and once again be encompassed by a sense of quiet satisfaction for no apparent reason. She needed someone motivated and ambitious like me around to encourage her to push herself and always work towards doing better. How do I know this? Well, she told me so.

I would come back from my ballroom dancing class and try to teach her everything new that I had learnt. I would squirm and shriek every time she touched me because it would make me feel ticklish all over. We would giggle like school girls every time our breasts bounced off each other and almost never managed to finish the routine as we were both laughing so hard by then.

We bonded over books and movies and sometimes over common thoughts, ideals and dreams while we let life happen somewhere along the way. We cried together, laughed together, sang together, danced together and lived together, going through all of life’s great and not so great moments with each other somewhere in the vicinity willing to lend a helping shoulder if need be.
Every thing I wanted from my ideal relationship with a man, I got from my relationship with my roommate. Now only if we were attracted to each other or for that matter even the same sex, things would have been hypothetically perfect!

I have always wondered why is it so that the when two women become good friends, the bond that they might share with each other runs a lot deeper and stronger than what we may ever hope to share wit someone of the opposite sex. Is it solely because we happen to share the same gender and therefore by proxy the same organs and hormones that makes us tick, that we are inherently bound together and therefore capable of understanding each others needs and wants a lot better? I have never felt the level of comfort and ease that I had developed with ‘N’ around any of my previous boyfriends, not even the ones that I supposedly loved. Is this because when two women make a committed choice to indulge, include and incorporate each other into their individual lives they are much more willing and able to see the beauty and extraordinariness amongst the most banal and simplest of things?

I just got a really long email from her the other day filled with fond recollections that plastered a nice big smile on my face which was difficult to wipe off at least for a good few hours.
Why I reminisce about ‘N’ after a good two years since we went our separate ways? I don’t know, I just don’t think I need to have any logical and pragmatic reason fondly reflect upon the most sincere, honest, enriching relationship of my life, minus the earth shattering, toe curling sex of course.

Lady Bombay

I’m so thoroughly bored of Bombay; it makes my head spin and my limbs numb with exhaustion. They call this the city of dreams, a place brimming with excitement and adventure that will constantly keep you on your toes and keep you guessing. What total utter rubbish! I have been back for a little over six months and the memorable moments have been few and far in between. The most exciting that has happened to me since I have gotten back is sharing a cab ride with a transsexual hooker in Colaba; in retrospect it wasn’t all that exhilarating either. Thanks to her, I now understand the small shady alley’s of South Bombay with a lot more intimacy and depth, which I lacked before, but to be honest, I was too damn chicken shit to actually utilize the moment to its full potential. I was so damn freaked out; I hunched low in my seat and tried to disappear into the seat cushions as the rather fetching transsexual openly and unabashedly trolled for customers, staring into cabs and peeking at dilapidated hotels. I was so afraid of being recognized, like anyone one would really even know who I am? I had been in the country for less than two months, a different picture from my childhood days. I should have played along and let my curiosity take over, after all it’s not like everyday that I get to share cabs with prostitutes. She looked so fetching, with shapely ankles and long muscular legs. Her straight, silky, brown wig sure had me fooled for a while. She looked like a polished, young urbanite ready to have a good time on a Friday. I guess I should have paid more attention and noted that there was something awkward about her gait; she was uncomfortable in her ultra tight skirt that clung to her legs like second skin. She pulled it down at least twice in the short distance from the station to the cab. For an unguarded second or two she even dared to swallow, her bobbing Adam’s apple giving away her secret, it was a hot sticky evening, I’m sure her throat must have been parched with thirst, I know mine was.
I was completely fascinated, totally in awe of this might magnificent creature. My right hand shook with nervous excitement, it always does when I am thrilled. To me,
she was like a character that had stepped out of the pages of “Maximum City”, a miniscule part of the large, undignified so called underbelly of this gigantic city. She lived a dangerous, seductive, gripping life, amongst the pimps and the hookers and the druggies, the men and women that inhabit the streets of Bombay after they are abandoned by the civilized world. She lived a life that I wasn’t born into, a life that I had only experienced through books and movies. My middle class, suburban, Maharastrian upbringing has kept me somewhat sheltered from some of the harsher realities of life and this city.
For all the talk about crime, gangs, underworld, drugs, whores, pimps, cops, rapes and murders that is associated with this city, in all my years of living here I hadn’t met a single one of them…until now. Not that they didn’t exist, they are very much a part of the same city that I inhabit, breathing the very same air that I do, most probably drinking the very same germ infested municipality water, which I meticulously boil every morning, but for obvious reasons, under the very same smog polluted Bombay sky, we live such different lives that our paths never ever crossed.
In spite of the odds being against us ever meeting, here we were traveling in the same cab, to almost the same distance, but for very different reasons. I wanted to strike up a conversation, yet no words escaped my throat. For the first time in my life I felt truly intimidated by a person that was oblivious to my presence. She obviously had more pressing issues on her mind. My hunched, nervous self in the back seat held very little significance to her, I was just another unidentifiable face, which makes up this city that she would forget all too soon. To me she was Lady Bombay, grandiose and powerful cascading with sadness and neglect, at the brink of deterioration. This is what I had returned for.
In a diverse and varied city like Bombay, if one is thirsting for interesting encounters and reminiscing about long cab rides with transvestites four months later, you know there is a problem. Maybe I am just not all that fun, adventurous or interesting or maybe it is so that fun and adventure eludes me like the bubonic plague, whatever maybe the case, my mind is absolutely numb with boredom. People are just not built for stagnation, well not me anyway. This whole nine to five crap job, crap home, crap food, crap friends and crap relationships may actually appeal to someone but not me. I want to live a whirlwind life where one moment vastly differs from the next, providing a fresh perspective on the most mundane things. May I never, ever loose the power to see life just a little crocked, this I sincerely pray for?
Sometimes it is hard to see things skewed when everything is so damn straight around you. I wonder when my next, big adventure will begin, when Lady Bombay will once again shower upon me the blessing of an unexpected encounter, and well minus the fat cab fare.