Soulgoats

This weekend Soulgoat was in town, paying through her nose ONLY to meet me. We hurriedly did a detailed calculation and spread her airfare over 3.5 days and came up with a figure of Rs. 125 bucks per hour for her Bombay trip. Now that put me under a lot of pressure to entertain her and make it worth her while and money. For instance, I would not even let her sleep/relax/watch TV as these are things she could have done at home in Delhi for free. To sum up, I was at my obsessive worst, while she patiently put up with me, cooked an awesome lunch on Friday and an equally yummy breakfast on Sunday.

Now I have been friends with Soulgoat for almost five years since we spent two glorious months in Hyderabad while interning with Company D back in 2008. But ever since we both graduated, we have been in different cities, meeting once a year, though we became the best of friends over emails/IM/phone and most recently, the annoying Whatsapp. Since we are cursed with similar personalities (or the lack of it) AND we are fellow Capricornians, we call ourselves Soulgoats. And now that we were meeting after more than a year, we did everything that two women could cram in three days: eat, drink, shop, watch movies and most importantly bitch about the rest of the world!

We ate till we threw up and continued eating: A Bengali dinner at Bijoli Grill, a Parsi lunch at Britannia, a Punjabi lunch at Urban Tadka, coffee at Aromas and Starbucks, snacks at KFC and Theobroma, Pav Bhaji at Sukhsagar, sweets at Bengali Sweets and yogurt at Cocoberry…

We drank till we were dehydrated and passed out: For the first time, we ventured to buy alcohol over the counter from a Theka, squirming in the maze of men, staring us down. But once were home and settled down on the floor with alcohol and snacks, there was no looking back as we abused the entire Universe, sparing nobody…

We visited all the clichéd Bombay places: Linking Road, Waterfield Road, Bandstand, Marine Drive, Churchgate, Gateway of India, Colaba Causeway and Fort…

We shopped till we couldn’t walk anymore: We scrounged through ALL the stores in Palladium, Skyzone and R City, and I HELPED her buy a pretty and colourful dress (a rare diversion from her usual black uniforms) for her upcoming party plans while I bought the MOST expensive outfit for myself, along with shoes, belt, earrings and bracelet for, well, for, MY.NEED.FOR.COMPULSIVE.SHOPPING…

And we also watched Talaash: I know we are not getting back the 700 bucks and precious three hours of our lives back and we are contemplating suing Aamir Khan for his temporary insanity when he signed a movie which had a script as bizarre as it could insult my intelligence more than my boss…

Today morning, when we finally bid goodbye to each other, I realized once more, why we were Soulgoats:

Soul sisters and soul mates may come and go, but soulgoats are forever…