An ode to two girls by Karmishtha Krishna

An ode to two girls

Karmishtha Krishna

This is not a poem. It is a vivid memory of two girls from 2004 One nearly five, the other nearly six One with a bob cut, the other with a tight oily braid One who hated going to school And the other, who never had a chance to. One was me, the other was our helper’s daughter We spent our days Dancing around a white wooden table on a green grassy lawn Nurturing a friendship that was too difficult for others to imagine.

‘Two polar opposite DNA strands can’t helix up together’, they said ‘Those who can afford new clothes every month mingle only amongst themselves’, they said And so, she began to mingle with only those To whom the fortunate ones donated their old clothes And so, I gradually stopped sitting by the glass window Waiting for her to come by holding her mother’s old, ripped saree Waiting for her mother to salute mine and watch the mothers scowl As we galloped to our little corner - But before I knew it, it was all over. I moved on and made new friends every dusk And began sipping from porcelain teacups And she, was sent to Nepal For a more ‘disciplined’ upbringing And sadly, I have nothing more to recall.

But this, is not a poem. It is a painful memory of two friends from 2004 Who were scarred by differences in privilege Which I, a child of the gentry refused to remember Until I heard that she’d come back in 2018. And I ran to the glass window once again To get just a glimpse of my long-lost friend And there she was. Brown and beautiful as ever, with her tight oily braid I saw the child in her alive The little fingers tightly grasping an old, ripped saree But wait – It wasn’t her smile, it was her child’s.

She was now a mother.

Let me remind you - that this, is not a poem. It is a memory of two coming of age girls from 2018 I, who carried the weight of board exams And cribbed about the heavy burden And she, who carried the weight of a baby and an abusive husband And silently swallowed all her pain This is a memory of the day When two childhood friends met after fourteen years Through a glass window That somehow didn’t shatter that day - With screams that echo When they cross each other in the colony even today Without a smile, or a word.

You see, this is not just a poem. This is an ode to two girls from 2004 Way before one of them Was any different from the other.