Best Friends!

When we are small, at one point or other the English teachers always ask the students to write a paragraph about your Best Friend. So we write usually about the person who sat next to us at that moment without even realizing the weight that comes with the question. I just thought Today should be my turn to write about mine.

I met her when she was 8 or a year older. We were in class 4 then. I remember asking her to help me draw a diagram for me and after that we just became friends. She is my best Friend, the best person I could ever have. I am sure everyone has said the same about one friend or another, but not with as much conviction as I do right now. And if you knew just how much time we spend being friends apart from each other than with each other, you will be surprised we even managed.

I remember one particular incident that I think I will always remember. When we were pretty small we once volunteered to write charts for our class, she being the artist drew the whole picture, wrote the entire description and decorate it and in the end, selflessly sign it with both of our names. Just for the fact that I sat with her while she worked. She is that kind of a person. We used to be classmates then. After that, we just became inseparable. We lived in the same building, sat next to each other in class, had the same garden and even had our roll number right after one another! We would always be together.

I had to change schools at the end of grade VI, but it hardly mattered. Each year we would write letters. I would get one just before my Birthday, one around 1st August for Friendship Day, one before each exam wishing me luck and an after asking me about my results. It is not that we could not call each other up and talk like any other teenager, I guess we preferred the old way of writing letters. Anyone who has ever received a letter would know the difference between a phone conversation and a personal letter send only for you. They make you feel special. We choose to write letters. And at the risk of sound very childish and cliche, I still have my bunch of letters from her as I know she has mine.


When I saw her next, it had been 6 years since we saw each other. Lots of things had happened in both our lives by then but that didn't matter either. The moment something serious came up, she would always the be first one to know and She would always be the first one to respond. We chatted for a day and talked about everything and nothing at all. I don't even remember what we talked about, we just walked the whole Changangkha Lhakhang road talking!

The things with us is we spend more time apart than we do together. Right after we met, both of us had to leave for our Course respectively. She is in Sri- Lanka right now doing her MBBS and I am here in Wollongong. It has been 3 years since we last saw each other. But it has never affected us. We write to each other everyday even now. The maximum number has been 18 E-mails in a single day. Our Facebook walls are full of wall posts from each other and if a sad status comes up, each of us will be the first ones to respond.
I have good friends,lots of them. I am not saying I don't but she will always be my Best. They say your Soul mate is suppose to make you a better person, they say the only person who will stand by your side no matter what, is suppose to be your partner, but Not for me. She is the one who makes Me a better person. She is the one who I know will always stand by my side no matter what and I am realy grateful for having her. I know this sounds like a clichéd teenage piece for anyone to read, but this One I am writing it for her so I am allowed to be emotional.

I am Fat

'God, I need to reduce my weight' - That is pretty much what I always say every time I look at a mirror. Don't get me wrong, I am not fat. In fact I am thin, thinner than most girls I know. But somehow I always end up saying the same thing.It is like a refrain that is stuck in my head - 'I need to lose weight, I need to lose weight. I need to lose weight...

I am not a very active person so I never exercise. In fact the only exercise I have each day is my 15 minutes walk to uni and back and that too is spend only because I absolutely have to walk. The last time I ran to stay healthy would be Sports day in Yangchenphug and that would be 3 years ago! I don't usually starve myself to death, but that does not mean I eat healthy. I eat a lot when I feel active enough to cook but if I am not I can't be bothered to make the effort. Everyone tell me I am thin and I am. For a girl who is turning 22 soon, I am 39 and the heaviest I have been is 44. I know I am underweight and believe me, I get enough scolding from everyone around me to keep me company. But that does not stop me from obsessing over my weight. I don't want to be thinner than I am now for I am sure I might catch some horrible disease but I don't want my weight to increase too.

I still think I am fat. I am not saying it is true but it doesn't always have to be false for me not to believe it. I often wondered why that is the first though that pops in my mind when I looked in the mirror despite knowing that I am thin. I think the answers lies in the fact that we girls always pitch ourselves against each other. I can be optimistic and say all girls are friendly about our weight but the fact is we are not. There is always constant competition.We compare our looks, our hair, our clothes, so why should our body weight be any different. And for any girl, one will always be fatter compared to anyone else, no matter the truth! For me, I have always been called to be among the thin category. The first comment people give me when they see me is that I am thin, either as a complement or complain I can't say. Even girls who are thinner than me think I am thin and now I have internalized it so much I realized I don't want to become fat because then I wouldn't be the thinnest among my friends.

I can be typical and say obsessing over body weight is overrated but it wouldn't be the truth. I do care. I want to be thin and I want to remain thin. Because that is how I grew up, thinking that being thin is in vogue, the fashion that is 'in' all the time, the thing that most people obsesses over hence my mirroring obsession. There are enough articles written about girls obsessing over their weight. There are lots of girls who think they are fat complaining that thin girls are now on the verge of disappearing. There are people who complain that girls obsesses over their body so much as to starve themselves to death. But writing from a girl who has always been called thin, believe me we would not try so hard to be thin if only you did not want to be that thin. I don't think anyone would starve themselves to death if only it wasn't the 'it' things at the moment. 

Furthermore, it has only been a while since things has changed and anorexic has been termed a disease with boys stating 'bones are for dogs and we prefer meat on our women'. But the fact remains that being thin has remained in vogue for so long, it is difficult to come out of it. Thus the comparison and desperation to starve ourself to death just to be thin. 

What DO I write about?

Sometimes I wonder if I write junk. Does my writing matter? Do people read? Do they even care what I write about?

I want to write love stories, the small fights that underlines every story, the big one that tears every single one of them apart, the small romantic gestures between the two points, the heartbroken lovers. I want to write about every little detail that matter in a love story.But it hardly matter to readers who are already out of love or married for that matter, for they have already been there, done that, written about that. So why do I bother to write something that has been repeated over and over again? All the stupid arguments, the petty quarrels, the love tryst, it might as well sound like a stupid teenager's puppy love to the readers.

I want to write about fashion, about the endless obsession that comes with it, the ever changing trends that stick to one place for less than a second, the compulsive behavior of girls to stick to that millisecond. But people say fashion is just a waste of time, a frivolous that only those who don't have anything better to do concerned themselves with.  They say it is just appearances, a mean to provide vain people with more time to be narcissistic. And I refuse to be defined as a girl more concerned with fashion than climate change.

I want to write about climate change, fight about global warming and say I do care about the environment. I do care about resources. I want to write about how each of us live in ignorance thinking the other person is doing something for the environment. But there are already people writing thesis about these findings, people with banners protesting against climate change, students being taught environment-saving strategies in schools so am I not late in thinking to write about it?

I want to write about politics, argue that the present government is not doing enough, debate about the current tobacco control act, argue that  just because the government is acting inhumane does not mean it gives everyone the right to throw stones at them! But hey, I am just a kid who reads about it in the Newspaper and forums anyway. What will I know about politics that other already haven't debated about? What will I have an opinion about that others haven't had already?

I want to write. I want to write about the daily happening of my life, about the nonsensical movies that I watch, the little debates that roommates have, but hey everyone is going through the same experiences everyday. Why would anyone want to read about the monotonous banality of one person's life? Isn't the person who experience it themselves more apt to write about it than the person who presumes to know about them?

I want to write. I want to write my own opinion about everything, about nothing, about the world. I want to point out things I don't like, things that I want to change, things I think should be changed but then you can simply think of me as a cranky young girl dissatisfied with her life enough to make others' uncomfortable. I want to be creative, write poems flouting conventions, create stories without grammar, write magic realism within my reach, try something new. But then I will just be the strange girl who has no command of the language and created a blog only because it seems to be in vogue.

I want to write. Without reasons. Without excuses. Without fear of being termed frivolous or arrogant for what I write. I want to write but like The Picture of Dorian Gray's quote, "Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter", people who write so often write their own life in paper, and I am so confused I am not sure which face to present to be scrutinized.