How Long Will Your friendship Last?

5 YEARS! Niamat Singh and Shivani Nirula

From being arch rivals to bosom buddies, Shivani and Niamat, both 20, have come a long way. Wading through the usual fights and misunderstandings, the girls have learnt to rise above their differences. And love and respect for each other isn’t the only thing in common; music brought them closer too. In fact, behind their jibes at each other lies a deep emotional bond. From walking around school and singing out loud to spending hours getting ready for night-outs and sharing both legal and illegal experiments, the duo has been inseparable since the time they met in the 9th grade. “She was the first out of us who experimented, while the rest of us just kind off stood in awe of her guts,” Niamat begins. Shivani protests with a laugh, “That is so not how it happened. She was the first to ‘grow up’! She had the first boyfriend, and we were all living her relationship for one year.”
Niamat remembers one of these few fights they’ve had, on a school trip to Gwalior. “Apparently, I told her she was ugly (which I still swear I never did). She was so furious that she asked a boy I had a crush on to tell me how ugly I was in front of everybody. I was so embarrassed, I don’t think I spoke to her for weeks.” “Shivani is deceivingly innocent,” reveals Niamat. “And she squeaks when she talks, I call her Squeak (which she hates). But she is
thoughtful, resilient, stable, hugely creative and generous. She is fit, has amazing hair and doesn’t eat enough. But she won’t sleep in the same bed with me because I kick and cuddle and steal the blankets.” Shivani retorts, “I think a lot and she doesn’t at all. She has absolutely no hang-ups in life. She loves talking, is self-obsessed and very dramatic, most times for nothing. But that’s so Nia, and it’s what I love about her.” With Niamat studying in Scotland, Shivani misses “being around one of the funniest people I know”. Life is a little dull without her “but she doesn’t seem to care”. She knows they will be great friends even when they are grannies.

10 YEARS! Anandita Nayar and Fatima Husain

One best friend works in the corporate world in New York, and the other is an aspiring actress in Bollywood, which means not meeting for long periods of time is de rigour. But for these 23-year-olds who went from being in ‘rival gangs’ during junior school, to the best(est) friends, they always just pick up from where they left off. “We gossip endlessly, remember all kinds of evil stories about school and the people we knew, and crack up about the most annoying situations in life,” says Fatima. “But mostly, we watch cheap masala movies,” says Anandita. As former rival gang leaders in middle school, DPS RK Puram, at the age of 12 the girls made a wise decision—to Collate their little fiefdoms and rule together. “I think we might have become friends over boys! I was the middleman for all of them,” says Anandita, “All the other girls were little princesses.” “Oh, please!,” leaps in Fatima.
“Anandita was just too precocious for us. We had no idea how to deal with her. I think she taught me the meaning of the word prostitute.”
Anandita’s precociousness translated later into an inimitable zest for life that led to her aspirations for a career in films. Whether it’s dancing in the rain or playing crazy pranks on their friends, sometimes this joie de vivre in
Anandita drives Fatima up the wall. “What I find most annoying is probably her zest for life!” Her friend retaliates, saying, “I hate that you have to run after every fat kid or cute animal you see.” Interestingly, besides Hindi and
English, the girls communicate through something they call ‘Anandita language’. And this secret language has only one translator, Fatima. ‘Saundlykdatonli’, said in a low voice, actually means ‘sounds like that only’.

15 YEARS! Anandita Bhisnoi and Sonam Malhotra

As best friends from the age of three, the one certainty in Sonam and Anandita’s relationship is that they complete each other’s sentences and refute each other’s stories. Everything else is a fun, hotch-potch mixture of their completely opposite personalities. Even today, their tabla teacher’s analysis from when they were 7-years-old, and sat on his knees, holds true. Says Sonam, “I was the chatterbox and the nautanki and Anandita was the 
mature one who didn’t talk a lot. The ‘innocent girl’.” However, they do feel that there is an invisible umbilical chord that strengthened their relationship through the many different phases of life. Living for almost two decades in
the same neighbourhood, taking the same car pool, then school bus, and being in each other’s homes every single day for almost two decades can make you an expert on every little nuance in your BFF’s expression, tone and mood. But a friend in need is a friend indeed. Remembering a time when Anandita was going through a particularly reclusive phase, Sonam complains about how stubborn and stuck-in-a-rut her best friend can get. “I love Andy for being the most honest and genuine person I know. She’ll never judge me and shares every emotion with me. But she can just be so stubborn sometimes,” says Sonam. “When I’m stubborn, Sonam is pushy and that leads to a vicious cycle. Sometimes, when I don’t want to go out, Sonam just won’t stop calling.” Yet, their arguments stop when it comes to intuitively buying exactly the same clothes while shopping separately, or the collective crushes they had as kids. “Now, luckily, we just don’t like the same kind of guys,” says Anandita.