Our friendship has survived for many years. As one matures one learns how to separate the fair weather friends from those who will hold your hand when your world has been devastated and is dark and depressing. My two best friends and I are so different and yet so similar. There is a bond that binds us together.
Throughout the years I found that I could not rely on my perfect sisters in their perfect marriages for any kind of love and support; they think my parents spoil me and that I am a tad too impulsive. So I am very thankful that the good Lord sent me these two perfectly imperfect women to be part of my life. I like to call them my “soul sisters”.
Rupa … her name does mean beautiful and she lives up to it. I sometimes call her Rups. (Coincidentally, Suhina also means beautiful but I’ll get to her next.) It seems that the “Mother of the Vedas” is to have beauty in her life, in all shapes and forms. I worry about Rupa and her weight gain. I suspect the eating has nothing to do with her fondness for the finer things in life. She’s also trying to forget that night so long ago.
“Decadence leads to softness of body, Rups,” I often remind her, declining the delicacies she tries to tempt me with. Fascinated, I watch as a look of ecstasy appears on the face of this matronly woman as she licks her way through another creamy burfee. Rupa reminds me of those soft and sensual belly dancers who mesmerised and seduced wealthy sheiks. I think she is slowly losing the goddess factor, though many of the opposite sex would beg to differ for my eyes never miss the lustful looks that come her way. Poor Rups is oblivious to these looks and often says her softness lends her a comfortable look, one that makes toddlers climb on to her lap and snuggle up against her plump bosom. These days her daughters look to me as their role model and to my boys as their buddies and bodyguards.
I met Rupa the year Nelson Mandela walked into the world a free man. A heavy drizzle was falling that September morning as I huddled under an umbrella waiting for the green government bus to take me to work. My gym bag was heavier than usual and kept sliding off my bony shoulder. My silky fringe fell into my eyes and as I blew it away I saw a woman, slightly above average height and almost as skinny as I am, gazing at me. I did not like the look in her eyes.
Pity was the last thing I needed.
CHAPTER TWO
1990
“Do you need help with that? I have a free hand.”
The young woman, who could have been anywhere in her early to mid-thirties, swung her jet black hair carelessly over her shoulder as she stretched out her hand to take the umbrella from me. I could not help but notice the faint mark of an absent wedding band on her ring finger.
“I’m Rupa. I’ve seen you a few times and wanted to introduce myself but you always seem miles away.”
I looked at this stranger beside me. She seemed vaguely familiar and there was something I recognised in her eyes. It touched my already bitter thirty-year-old heart but I was not ready for anyone else’s pain. What made her think I wanted to chat? But a good upbringing always won when a hand of friendship was extended. My mother made sure we learnt our manners at an early age; moreover, I had no genuine friends at that time. I gave her what I thought was my best sociable half smile. “I’m Gayatri and I have never noticed you before.”
She returned my smile. “I live with my parents and my two angels. It’s a month now since I started working at the hospital. That is where I have seen you.”
Well, that was a surprise. I had been working at the hospital for the mentally challenged for eighteen months as secretary/personal assistant to the medical superintendent.
“What is it that you do exactly?” I enquired.
I’m the curious type. Most human beings like talking about themselves and I have a knack of getting them to do just that. I often find the ones who don’t have much, or have too much, to say are the fascinatingly duplicitous ones. I love to get into their heads and hearts and so naturally I hoped Rupa would tell me all about herself. I know the tongue does not always deliver what the mind and heart desire and it is one’s actions that reveal one’s true nature. I discovered this the heartbreaking way.
“I’m a lab technician, finally putting my training into practice.”
Was she going to flaunt her education in my face? Suddenly I felt the matric I held and the secretarial diploma I had completed were insignificant when compared with the qualifications of a laboratory technician.
“You have a very important and demanding job as the PA to the top brass at the hospital,” Rupa said, casting a look of admiration at me, something I had not expected.
I glowed at her observation and felt my cynical heart melting like a glacier sliding down a steep slope but fighting to reach the end unchanged. Rupa was going to make a marvellously interesting friend, I decided. I didn’t make friends easily for I believed that friendship was earned through loyalty, understanding and compassion. Harendra always complained that I came across as snobbish whenever he introduced me to new people. I gave up explaining to him that only when I felt comfortable with someone did I let them into my life. I was a keeper and I preferred to keep people who mattered, really mattered to me, close to my heart. I didn’t allow just anyone into my space or my life. I liked to keep my insecurities and issues private and deal with them personally. I only allowed people I trusted into my circle. But now I was ripe and ready for a new friend and her words were a balm to my somewhat troubled soul.
“It is a very demanding job,” I said, “especially when we get negative publicity and I am tasked to ensure that the correct message goes out to the media from my boss.”
I told no one that I drafted those messages for him and that he merely put his signature to them. I made him look good in the media and he made me look good to the rest of the staff.
I did not like the look of sympathy in Rupa’s lovely honey brown eyes. Did she see through my so-called “glamour” into the sad and lonely soul that lived in my well-groomed body?
Rupa and I got on to the same bus, which served as transportation to our place of employment. She struck me as another wounded warrior – recovering from the aftermath of what, I wondered? My fertile imagination was running into overdrive because I wanted to know everything about her. I learnt that she too had a knack of asking prying questions without seeming inquisitive. Our getting-to-know-each-other conversation revealed we had a couple of things in common. We both were single parents. She had two daughters a year apart and I had three sons. I had been traded in for a more lustful woman while she was evasive as to the whereabouts of the keeper of her heart. I let that go for the time being, sensing that her pain was still too raw. We had both moved in with our parents when we needed a place to lick our wounds and repair the damage to our hearts and lives. We allowed our parents to spoil our children while we cried angry, bitter tears and lacked the energy to cope with the young ones.
I felt as though I had met my soul mate for we bonded almost instantly. I was intrigued by the air of mystery surrounding her, especially those aspects of her life she didn’t speak of. Typically female, we checked each other out and I found her no threat whatsoever. I relaxed and breathed in deeply before making the first move.
“What time do you take lunch?” I asked tentatively for I most certainly did not want to appear to be desperate for company. We arranged to meet in the hospital cafeteria for lunch and I wished I could tell her how excited I felt. So far the only person I had allowed to befriend me was the hospital PRO. She was bubbly, bright and ultra-confident and reminded me of a ray of sunlight. I could not help but be drawn to her. She was Suhina, the youngest of our trio.
The morning raced by with just a couple of minor crises to deal with.