The T and Me

T: I didn't sleep at all last night, I am sooo sleepy.
Me: Why? When did you sleep?
T: Around 10
Me: When did you have to wake up?
T: About 8 this am.

My friend T is one of those rare women who falls asleep during the day if she does not get her daily thirteen hours of sleep. She sleeps at parties, movies, restaurants, and during or after consuming alcohol; amid killing din or deafening silence. She is skinny as a reed but can eat half a pound of cake when she is hungry and I am jealous of her.

T (while eating cheesy pasta): Hey I made tossed vegetable salad for you today. Try some.
Me (after trying some): This is raw cabbage and veggies floating in vinegar.
T (totally incredulous): Is it? But I tossed it! I took all the ingredients and tossed it in a bowl. Isn't that how you make tossed salad?

T makes me laugh. Not because she is funny but because she is plain ridiculous.
She is the only woman I know who expresses her anxiety or stress by jiggling her breasts.
She is also the only woman I know who has nursed me to health like a mother and worried for me, sitting on a first floor balcony, like a father waiting for his daughter to return from a date he disapproves of.
It's not that I love her because when she was nine and went to visit the museum, her mum joked that her feet were larger than the 15 feet tall statue of the mythical feet of Bramha and she has believed it for the rest of her life -- reluctantly and ungracefully accepting "big foot" as a term of endearment. It worries me that if I move from this city, our inability to chat on the phone might mean that no one who is far removed from the daily events of my life would be bothered with how well I am dealing with them.

What makes her endearing is, on the rare occassion when she is wearing a delicate shell-pink kurta, in her enthusiasm to dress up, she puts on so much and such uncoordinated make up that people become genuinely concerned.
"Why are you made up like a goth rock chick?"
"Shut up. That's not what she had aimed for." I hiss through my teeth.

She looks at the world through myopic spectacles, which look like she stole them from a home for the elderly. Not just that, this was the pair even they were preserving as an example of glasses worn by the 1940's career man. With these bottle bottoms, an oversized sweater some homeless person may have given her because she looked at them so longingly, she cries silently into her glass when drunk. At times like these, I know, she likes to just be left alone but then people fuss over her.
People of all kinds love her because she is too kind to be rude and has a laughter so loud, Rajdeep Sardesai once forgot his lines because she was being amused at the other end of a very large office.

I love her because when no one is watching she sits alone and keenly observes her feet and sometimes applies mildly shiny glitter on her face to appear glamourous. But I love her most because when I ask her "How do I look?" she is the only person who says, "Not so good. You look like a watermelon."