14:45 hours, New Delhi. In a room where there is no sun. It’s a rather rotten day if you ask me, getting called into work that is contractually your day off – is particularly rotten. I love employment contracts, how they work only one way, how they let you know how many days you can take off, but never confirm how many additional days you need to come in. I think the catch phrase is job completion. The cellular chimes out loud and being the only person in office, I have it set defiantly on singing mode. It’s my best friend calling, we have been friends forever, we share everything in life, even a birth date and a year and memories and dreams... the only thing we don’t share is today, a day when I work and she doesn’t.

I answer with a hello which sounds more cheery than I feel.
“When will you finish,” she hisses out.
“Right now it looks like never...why?”
“I need to go shopping, remember that set....”
Right, I moan internally, another evening, another shopping spree. I glance at my unopened credit card statement, but my friend has no such worries, a bride to be – she is amazingly inflation-resistant. She’s just got engaged to the man of her dreams, for her life is now a countdown to the big day and I am counting along.
“Besides,” she continues, “I have to show you what he gave me for my birthday....”
When you are in the throes of balancing a stubborn expense account, an outrageously priced bauble that justifies its own expense head is not entirely appealing. But soon, she will be far away and these skipped evenings will bother me, once she moves on to a new place and new people and maybe even new friends.
“Fine, when and where” I concede.

“The usual, 5.45, ok?” Her ‘ok’ is a statement of confirmation rather than permission.
And as I begin to answer with a tentative, “I’ll try...,” she’s already hung up. Undoubtedly dashed off somewhere to resuscitate another flagging priority for her wedding, or to strike off another item on a ‘to do’ wedding list, which never seems to end.
18:00 hours, GK I Market, Parking Lot.
She’s standing there her orange kurti clinging to her body and her flowing skirt concealing her determined stance as she waves me into a parking spot. It’s way too warm for September and it’s unnecessary this pantomime of waving hands and traffic policeman gestures as she argues with the driver of a sneaky Toyota Innova trying to steal my spot. She always stands up for me, this one. From the time we were five, and I was a lispy tot.
“You’re always late,” she grumbles as I lock my car door. “Anyway, come along, we need to spend at least an hour in the shop,” she says grabbing my arm and pulling me along. The twinkle of her new watch catches my eye, as the loose diamonds slide over its face.
“It’s beautiful,” I say twisting it around.

The twinkle of her new watch catches my eye, as the loose diamonds slide over its face. “It’s beautiful,” I say twisting it around.

“We are late, you can gush later,” she admonishes as we pick up the pace and stride purposefully towards the jewellery store. GK – I, M Block, it hasn’t changed much in all these years. Although we have and even our strides have, I muse amusedly. From those desperately self-conscious teenage years, when we practiced that slow deliberate amble and rolled our hips just so, on our countless laps round the market. To the times when we walked faster and ignored those boys we always ignored. Especially the ones old enough to drive, who cruised alongside with their windows down and music up. This was where we had our first dates, at the price of a melting softy and dizzying spins around this market that always offers familiar sights. Today I see some more who remind me of me – and of her, I look to see if she notices. But she wears that vaguely distracted yet determined look. The look she gets when she knows just where she’s heading and is confident of all that life promises. It’s the same look she had when those many years ago a boy slipped a piece of paper with his name and number on it to her. A boy who is today the man that she is to wed. This is a market where we all grew up a little. It’s a market where we realised what we wanted and it wasn’t always something we spotted in a store window.
“Let’s hit McDonald’s for a quick bite,” she winks at me, “before I get on that god-awful Wedding Lehenga Diet.”
“I thought we were running late.”

“Never too late for a big Mac and a shake.” And she crooks her arm through mine, like we did in school, before we grew up.
We turn the corner and cross over to the elevated pavement. We climb on our steps synchronised, one left foot following the other, hitting the uneven concrete in perfect timing and then this ground slips. And it is black. It’s a second, or maybe a little longer before my eyes flutter open, when I feel this searing pain pierce through my legs and my mind goes blank but I am revived by a bright light that bites my eye. It’s her watch, twinkling at me, its arms frozen in an eternal embrace. Her arm is still touching mine, comforting me, trying to hold me - only she is ten feet away.
The countdown has stopped.
I try and stand up for her, for all the times that she has for me, but the darkness swallows me whole.
(No lives were lost in the GK I Market Blast, on September 13 due to the timely and vigilant action of the market association, and the local police. Stand up to terror.)

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