Last week was abuzz with costume parties street skits and what not celebrating the biggest wedding of the season - that of Prince William and Kate Middleton. I was browsing through some of the pictures, people dressed up as royalty, people on the street wearing masks, people with those weird head dresses which by the way I have no clue how they depict British royalty , royal tea-party dramas etc and I could not help but remember a group of four girls, four best friends. Let me tell you their story.
Not so long ago, four girls decided to get together and form an exclusive club of their own. They had been studying together for almost two years then and got along very well with each other. They formed the club and named it DART (no the name did not seem silly at all to them) - the first alphabet of each of their names. Now, I won't reveal their names yet.- maybe at the end of the post. They were very pleased and extremely proud of everything associated with the club - the name, the exclusiveness, the secrecy. They announced the formation of the group to the entire class and turned up their noses at anybody asking them for a membership - after all, it was supposed to be an exclusive group. They invented games to be played (ok top secret games which no one else was allowed to participate just to make them jealous), wrote each other ridiculous letters , discussed guys, parents, sisters and brothers dresses, celebrated each others’ birthdays with cards and gifts and generally ran awry!
They had nicknames for their teachers, funny names for each other and a passion for any gossip. They laughed at their math teacher who was from Andaman's and had a funny accent and pulled pranks on him. Those S.U.P.W periods when one among them got punished for not making an electric bell or for not drawing wiring diagrams (which anyway nobody could and everybody used to draw some complicated maze which used to leave the Sir all livid), they all shared the punishment and wrote out each others imposition. They drove their economic Sir crazy with their constant banter in the class. During lunch breaks, they explored the woods behind the school and came up with all less explored spots. They insisted on being seated together in the class, their favorite meeting spot for all secret rituals - the floor under their desk and the favorite meeting slot - the Hindi period. The Hindi period was their most favorite as they could literally get away with anything with their Hindi mistress and Hindi was really really boring as a subject for anybody. The minute their Hindi mistress started on "satpuda ke khane jungle" and " kshama, daya, tap, tyaag, manobal", they had to invent something to be distracted or else they would all fall asleep - yes including the teacher everybody. So just in order to stay awake they used to go all riotous during the Hindi period with secret games and umpteen pranks on the Hindi mistress! Oh, the secret games and secret ceremonies!!! One of their most favorite pastimes was to pretend to be famous personalities in news those days and enact ridiculous scenes out of their lives. And it was during those days that Princess Diana and her friend Dodi Al Fayed passed away in the infamous motor car accident suddenly the news papers were full of British Royalty. Obviously they had to pretend to be British royalty and they did so in style! They even had a secret wedding ceremony between Prince Charles and Princess Diana attended by Prince William and Prince Harry. Ah, how scandalous!!! They also loved the term paparazzi (their first ever introduction to the word) and for a while they invented a lot of paparazzi games.
And then one day, about a year or two later, just as it was formed, the club was dissolved, for no particular reason. No, they did not have any arguments, no cat fights, no yelling matches but they just stopped being interested in the club and they grew out of each other. They developed different priorities and each went her own way after a while. It has been years since all this happened but I am sure each one of them still has some part of those boisterous days within her, each one still has at least one of those ridiculous letters stacked away some where, one of those birthday cards tucked away. If they meet today, I am sure they can still start off from where they left all those years ago for after all they say best friends are those who can start off from where they left.
And now for the names of those four girls..... No not yet.. Let it remain a secret for some more time…
