Chapter 8: A Brief History of Seher and Veena
The mall was where you would find Veena and Seher if they were out by themselves — trying out clothes and accessories, bitching about bad design and sometimes overpricing. Not counting the fact that they were gyno sisters²⁵.
Seher would always remember the night Veena and her had first met. Veena had escaped her first Bombay group (the one with the blood letters) and had dragged a couple of her juniors from work out for drinks — the only friends she technically had anymore. That was when she had first spotted Seher and another girl surrounded by guys near the bar. She hated Seher at first sight. While blindly navigating through young people problems on her own table, she couldn’t help but keep checking Seher out. She noticed that Seher had finally pegged one of the guys that she was giving more attention to than the others.
At some point, the both of them ended up outside the loo when Veena couldn’t help but blurt out to her, “He’s not going to stay till breakfast.” Seher just gave her a weird look and then completely blanked her. Of course, she was curious²⁶ how Veena knew that. A few weeks later when they ran into each other again outside the loo of the same pub, Veena looked down and kept her mouth shut. Seher bounced her eyebrows while looking at her. Veena really hadn’t been keeping tabs on Seher that evening after last time’s fiasco. She just pointed to where she was sitting, “I’m sitting there. I’ll let you know.” And Veena did.
The third time when they ran into each other, Seher showed up at Veena’s table, asked for her phone and fed her number into it. “If you’re right again tonight, then we’re hanging out from now on.” That is how Seher and Veena became friends. And they only grew closer since then. Two months into this friendship, Veena met Anand (and Kartik) at a party and then balanced two parallel social lives because she was just afraid of being judged by both sides for not being cool enough.
Through the Seher-Veena friendship, whenever Seher felt the need to be with Veena (either for her own benefit or Veena’s) she would make a joke about kidnapping her. Veena, who was used to short escapes to Mahabalipuram or Pondicherry in her college days in Chennai, hadn’t just taken off like that since she had moved to Bombay. Once every two to three months, she would go to Chennai for a four-day weekend. And Anand and her had taken only one long holiday together — Goa, for a week.
On the morning after the Seher-Anuj breakup, Seher executed her threat. Seher and Anuj showed up at Anand and Veena’s in a rental car, with cycle coffee and cycle idli vada at 4am. It was the first week of Anand and Veena living together. Anuj was smoking a joint in the hall when Anand was sent out of the bedroom in his boxers, holding a pillow. Seher’s instructions to Anand as she pulled the duvet off him was the only time she called Anand by his real name. “Anand, go out and take care of Anuj.” She herself sat on Veena’s head, fed her the coffee and the idli vada and then pushed her sleepiness into the bathroom. “Don’t come out till you have peed, pooped and brushed your teeth. Bathing is optional.” (Of course, Veena showered. She wouldn’t have been able to step out otherwise.)
Anand sat next to Anuj, holding the pillow like a comforter and helped him finish the joint. Anand asked Anuj to play something on the system and crashed. Veena followed Seher’s orders and did not ask any questions till they were in the car, driving to Niyati’s. That was when Seher told her that they were going to Mahabaleshwar (not to be confused with Mahabalipuram). When they reached Niyati’s, she was waiting by the watchman’s cabin with a giant bag. This would be the first time Veena would call in sick at work, right in the middle of the week.
Later, when Anand woke up, Anuj told him that Seher and him had broken up. Although, they were still going to be friends and he was still going to hang out with the gang. When Anand texted Kartik the same, he replied with a: “That doesn’t make sense.” Veena had used the exact same words with Seher over breakfast at a vada pao stall somewhere on the outskirts of the city. Niyati tapped Seher’s shoulder, unsure of how delicate the situation was, leaned towards her a little to say, “You’ve taken some stuff from him for this trip, right? Because I only have about three joints worth on me.” That had made Seher break into the first smile in the last twelve hours.
The girls rented a bungalow on the outskirts of Mahabaleshwar, entered town only to pick up booze and underwent “a cleansing ritual”, as Seher put it. That was also the first time she told Veena and Niyati about how during college she had run away to Uttaranchal to join a pseudo-religious cult for three months.
²⁵ During her extremely promiscuous college days, Seher’s gyno sisters were Gay Jasbir and Aanchal. Once every couple of months, she’d drag Aanchal and Gay Jasbir to the gynecologist for a check-up. Her internet friends from other countries had insisted she do that. (Not that Gay Jasbir hadn’t been screaming the same thing.) She only did so after a particularly bad case of a UTI. In Bombay, her gyno friends had been Veena mostly and Niyati would join them “when she was bored”. Anuj used to tag along when they were dating. Anand and Kartik would just shudder at the thought. Although, Anand had been with them twice (to Veena’s discomfort) as the timeline of their relationship moved closer and closer to New Year’s Eve 2012.
²⁶ It is an old Actorography method called the Focus of Commitment. According to Actogoraphy, if someone is committed enough to take anything to its obvious next level — like in the case of a casual one-night-stand, it would mean breakfast — their eyes will focus on you, while everything else in the background will be out-of-focus. In the otherwise scenario, they will see the entire frame in complete, wide-angle focus. Veena was the master of looking at someone’s eyes, even from a distance, and telling you if they were focused right. The Focus of Commitment also tells you if your fellow actor is going to pull off a bit correctly or not.
