'The joys of midlife dosti'

An old friend stayed with me last month. When it was time for her to leave, we hugged each other and I said, ‘After five days, friends and fish both start to smell. You are leaving just in time.’ My cousin, standing with us, took offence on her behalf. It was difficult to explain to him that this was a long-standing joke between us; old friends develop a language of their own, a Morse code of jests and jibes only they can decode. The joke started when we were in our thirties and, at that point in our rushed, harried lives, held an element of truth. Now, it seems to work as a defence mechanism against our sadness at having less time together.

As young women, our friendships are forged with lightning speed and held together with deep intensity. When I had just returned from boarding school, a tall eighteen-year-old with a laughter-filled nasal voice decided to make me her best friend. My loneliness evaporated in her steamy dining room; the table always laden with dishes left over from her mother’s cooking classes. Our friendship had its bespoke fragrance – a mix of strawberry lip gloss, tandoori masala, spearmint chewing gum and, sometimes, sour hangovers. Boyfriends and breakups were minor creases quickly ironed out by the warmth of our friendship. We were leaving the family nest, ready for clumsy take-offs.

Relationships in our teens and twenties tend to be governed by identity formation. Like being in a room where mirrors are placed opposite each other, creating a series of endless reflections. Around another group of teenagers, I felt awkward, always a step behind, but around my best friend, I was the best version of myself, the funny girl with a spirit that matched her large bottom. The greatest friendships fill all your hollow cavities like tides carrying seawater over sandy depressions.

In my thirties, friendships took on a different pattern. Earthshine is a lunar phenomenon, where the dark side of the moon is lit by a radiant crescent like a lopsided grin. I knew my friends existed, but most had been relegated to the background with just a sliver shining bright. During this phase, ‘hold’ seemed like a constantly used phrase: holding down jobs, holding together marriages and holding onto children. The days of bar crawling were replaced with couple dinners and Sunday brunches with the in-laws. Tasks and to-do lists were like termites burrowing into the yellowing fabric of our friendships, sometimes destroying them or, at best, turning them into safety nets that caught us as we fell. Friendships revolved around being the repository of each other’s secrets with passcodes that could never be shared. Time was carved out for our close pals, but we were far from sitting in the sidecar and singing a duet about dosti like Jai and Veeru.

Then along came creaky middle age. Juggling work and home had become effortless after decades of practice, and some of us were also grappling with the empty nest syndrome. Our mothers had started playing rummy with their friends when they had reached middle age. Mine had a folding card table stacked in her garage, ready to be set up between her shoots and other engagements. Since playing rummy would further validate the frightening thought that we had truly turned into our mummy, my friends and I started playing board games, mahjong being the latest entrant on this list.

It’s not that we suddenly have all the time in the world; it comes from knowing time is running out. It’s not just the women; I also see my husband starting to schedule weekly volleyball matches with the same focus that he fixes his shoots. While I am guilty of merely moving meetings for our game get-togethers, the last time we played mahjong, one of my friends got off an eight-hour flight and headed straight to the table set up in my house. The dedication reserved for our children is now being used to service our needs for companionship.

A few weeks ago, we went bowling. Chomping on French fries and trying to knock down pins, it didn’t feel very different from the days when we played pitthu and aimed at a pile of stones. The excitement at a strike, the groans when the ball went into the gutter and cheers for each other were reminiscent of our times on the playground. I lost the first game, and my friend suggested using a heavier ball. I protested, ‘No, you know how weak my joints are; I don’t have Popeye’s biceps.’ She insisted I give it a try. I did, and I won. From zero to hero. This was the same woman who, in my thirties, had pushed me to stop shying away from the limelight.

My identity is no longer shaped by my friends, yet in their gaze, I find traces of the best version of myself. These are old relationships based on trust. Ones that take time to blossom. Layers opening up in the Fibonacci spiral slowly over decades, like the strings of mogra I sometimes buy at traffic lights in the morning. Buds, white as a summer cloud, that will bloom by dusk. Middle age has brought me back to the place my friends and I once inhabited on the threshold of adulthood. After years of being tied down with responsibilities, we are able to fly again. Swallows migrating together, wings spread out like origami fans, to the southern latitudes of our lives.

This is an excerpt from Twinkle Khanna’s new book Mrs Funnybones Returns, now available to buy.