When I recollect my college days I think, “Those were the best days of my life,” For those who don’t know me I graduated from Darjeeling Government College (Gunda College as most people called) with a plain Degree of B. Com (I got dropped from Honors in 2nd yr) in 2006.
In my first year I stayed as a paying guest and knew only a few Bhutanese students. In my second year I shifted from the previous house to another and stayed there again as a paying guest (My parents didn’t have faith on my cooking).
It was then when I met my friend ‘Phagpa,’ (I love to call her that). We were neighbors and we used to get along quit well as we shared some bad habits (That’s a secret).
Those days Phagpa was fat so I gave her the name lovingly, just as she has a loving name for me.
Days turned into weeks and weeks into months, before it was a year we had become best friends that we were together almost everywhere (except for the toilets), that some of the people also took us as lesbians (one of our friend called us ‘girlfriends’).
“Thank God you have a boy friend,” that’s what Phagpa used to say. We were so close that she decided to move with me as a paying guest too. My aunty was happy because she liked Phagpa too. We had to share my room as no other rooms were empty and later on another of our friend (Kaktar) wanted to shift with us. So that small room of mine was not enough to take three of us so we had to ask for a bigger room.
As you know, my aunty was happy to give us a bigger room as money was what mattered to her.
Three of us started living in a big room where there were only two beds (two of us were sleeping together). It was fun, complaining about the food in dzongkha (earlier I was the only Bhutanese paying guest staying there). But aunty as we all called her was also good to us (especially me; after all that gifts I gave her each time I returned from home).
Even though three of us stayed together, things didn’t change for the two of us. We were still as close as we could get when Phagpa suddenly had to go to Bhutan.
Phagpa was gone and one day kaktar ended up fighting with our aunty and in her anger she stated that none of us liked staying there and that we were going to shift.
After that statement we had no other option then to move (I somehow convinced my parents as my new friend was a great cook). Luckily in such a short notice two of our seniors agreed to take us in. when Phagpa returned from Bhutan she was shocked to see that we were staying in a flat on our own without anyone to control us.
The place we stayed was called ‘Dolls Dreams,’ (which was owned by daju chethey- bald). He could be older than my dad but we had to call him daju as he was still a bachelor. His house was located in Toongsung (little Bhutan was what most of the locals called it).
We had to go through ever kind of experiences there. There is water shortage in Darjeeling and we had to adjust with the little water we had. I even recall some moments when we had to wash our clothes with rain water. But those moments were fun.
That was the height of freedom as we had no timing to anything we like to do but as nothing is permanent our so wasn’t our stay together. After all we are girls, so a little misunderstanding occurred here and a little there.
No, not Phagpa and me, we were together after that too but it was Kaktar, who did not want to stay with us (may be she has a reasonable reason but if you ask us we have a good reason to give too).
We had to leave that house as that house was quit bigger for the two of us, keeping in mind the water scarcity we face there. We shifted to another house in ‘Ganesh Gram’.
And those days were really the best days of my life. If people had there happiness in shares I am sure the two of us had more than our share.
We had all types of experiences there it was basically like a mad house. All our other friends including Kaktar would come to our place to sleep over.
Though the actual occupants were only the two of us, most of our other friends stayed with us (of course the expenditure was born by the two of us).
The two of us might have won a noble prize each for adopting so many girls (that too older than us). They ate at our place though we also went to there place (but it was more often on our side) slept at our place so much so they came to date at our place. hahahahah
We were many of us and out of that five us were basically living together (the others did come). We even named our selves just to show that we were so close but that name never got close. Zena, katerena (phagpa), Jasmine, Jessica and one of our friends was called Carin (kaktar).
These names were not very common even within us it was only jokingly we called eachother by those names or else most of the time we were back to square one.
This time also happiness did not last more, the two other friends left us and the three of us were left to stay together. Of course Phagpa and I were still together but the other friend staying with us was Baby (Jessica)
Baby as we called her not because she is small but because she was the biggest among the three of us.
The three of us got so well along that I can’t recall a single moment were we fought (Though we did some back biting sometimes). Time flew by and it was time for our final exams. We did our last minutes studies and managed to get through (thank god).
The three of us are still good friends and you must have guessed it, yes Phagpa and I am working in the same organization today and baby is taking care of her shop.
The only difference today is Phagpa is no longer fat.
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