Kindred Spirits: Navigating Life’s Journey Through the Power of Women’s Friendship

Another Friendship Day came and went, and as tradition would have it – I didn’t wish anybody. But it did get me thinking – as happens to all of us -from what we are reading concurrently, to what we are watching, and what the internet throws up, to what our friends are discussing on Facebook.
And a stray thought wedged its way into those nooks and crannies of everyday existence – I remembered how, even when I was in a steady relationship (is there something like that though? Because there’s nothing steady about a relationship, it had its knots and hills and dents) – I never went shopping with the man. I somehow always, unfailingly enjoyed shopping with the girls. Even if I weren’t buying anything, I’d sit outside the trial room with a book, and urge the girls to try out different outfits and I’d love this whole exercise of reading, and occasional glimpses up, to either approve or reject a piece of clothing. In this mundane exercise, I derived much intrinsic calm, I loved how unrushed, unhurried, stretching, boundaryless, and minuscule the world just then was – just in those few minutes, within those corridors, where colors and patterns were being discarded or dedicated, and conversations over the trial room door were both spontaneous and sprawling – panning nostalgia, to itch in the nostrils.
I passed on this tradition to the little girls I knew too – I insisted they sit with a drawing book or the Diary of a Wimpy Kid, while I tried out outfits.

And in this, I always pitied the woman who came with a man to shop.
She looked hopeful.
He looked placid.
She looked askance.
He looked deadpan.
She finally looked annoyed.
He finally looked resigned.

I always wondered why partnered women, opted for this terrible chore with a man – and turned this euphoric exercise into a joyless one.

And we also gave unsolicited feedback over a dress – it was my most natural predilection to tell a stranger woman – “hey that looks gorgeous on you”.
Usually, this was followed with, “You think it fits right? One size looser?”

Women that said they didn’t make friends in their thirties, often struck me as strange.
Because in our thirties, we learned to cut through the bullshit, stampede through the protocol, wafted into a comfortable understanding of our mid-lives and mid-riffs, and judged not too many things except fascism and bigotry.
We didn’t care for being the most important thing in the room.
We were happy to be in a room, where some people -at least some people, wanted to see us and were so happy to see us.
We held our friend’s drink, helped her with a hook or zip, flipped her curls, and straightened out the wrinkles on her dress.
And if someone walked up to flirt with her – we thrust her forward and said, go have fun chica!
And this could have been George Clooney or Miguel Angel Silvestre (my current heartthrob – though I feel too old to use this phrase. My heart throbbed for literature, never for a mortal, fleeting man).

So I look back to the women who left
and the women who stayed
And the women that came in anew, with their cameos and character arcs –
And perhaps, one thing stood out.

I have stayed friends with the woman who had no qualms about buying identical dresses.
If we both liked a piece of clothing – we squealed over it, and even said, “Let me buy it for both of us”.
These women stayed – through the turmoil and tumble of life.
The women who were slightly miffed if you wanted to buy what they were wearing or what they had ‘eyed’ first or touted the piece of clothing as necessary center stage and moment of ascendancy – fell through the cracks.

It became easier for women who shared clothes, who didn’t mind looking identical or less arresting than their friends – to stand by each other, through the years of dormancy and daredevilry that commanded attention to choices, decisions, and peremptory knocks on the door.

One particular internet forward on Friendship Day had said – “be the woman that compliments a woman in the elevator”.
I realize I’ve always been this woman.

Another said, “I barely use terms like a best friend anymore because I have so many friends and so many important ones during the many seasons of my life”
Which is true of me – as well.
I don’t use that sort of vocabulary at all.
The friend that I call for fashion advice the one I call during the aftermath of a break up the one I desperately seek when I am so creatively low, to the one I want to text furiously about the harrowing bigoted idiot on FB – all are very different, and lead very different lives and exhibit very different patterns.

I had just finished watching ‘Velvet”- a Spanish drama set in Franco’s Madrid of 1960 – where seamstresses live together in the basement of a couture store.

“1960s Madrid is your jam! “- my friend had said.

And it was.

Because those Chicas held my unwavering attention.

And the men -though irresistibly cute, were merely incidental.

And this Friendship Day, that’s the takeaway.

A single word.

Chicas.