This post is written for the Soul sisters contest by Women’s Web and Zivame – (http://www.womensweb.in/articles/soul-sisters-friendship-day-contest/)

I hadn’t heard about soul sisters until I actually found one. I had best friend(s) till then, and some of them still retain that status. They came from various walks of life and burst onto mine with something unique to offer. I was contented with best friends and I did not differentiate them by gender. Then came the inevitable part of growing up, too much of it actually. I had completed a quarter century of years on this planet, was not too happy about it, didn’t know much how to arrange the shelves of my messed up life, when – I met this girl on the Internet.

No, it was not as shady as a chat room ‘Hi, ASL?’ introduction. We had gone past the era of ASLs and entered the era of scrapbooks. My best friend was working in India at that time and I was a student in a foreign university. Distance mattered and we were rarely connected. I had made new friends in a new country, but there was something still missing. After a few months, one of my new friends decided to introduce me to his best friend. He felt that two girls who were quite alike each other must be acquainted and took up the task. Thus, I met Swati. Over scrapbook conversations. Since that was very much a public domain, we exchanged mail ids and started talking. She’s barely older to me by a year or two and had just started working in Calcutta. I don’t know what clicked us instantly, probably the fact that both of us were loners. We chatted for hours, the timezone difference not being a hindrance as she worked on her projects at night while I would be in lab. I guess sore hearts connect easily to each other for mutual healing and the same happened to us. Both of us were going through very rough patches in life, badly bruised by friends and other people, probably seeking solace in better friendship.

I think we’ll agree that the best part of our friendship/sisterhood is being there for each other. There have been days when I was crying and up all night, slowly sinking into depression and desperately seeking a few comforting words. As the matters were too personal, I could only confide into the very best friends. And Swati became one of them. She was patient enough to lend her ears and heart at the oddest possible hours, soothe me at times, scold me for being naïve at other times, but always being the chord that held me firmly. I have also tried to inject sense into her whenever she has stepped into her gullible self of believing every Tom, Dick and Harry.

Time flew, years passed by. It has been about seven years since I started knowing her. We have stood by each other the way only sisters and soul mates can. We have communicated via all media – letters, mails, chats, phone calls, visits. The latter ones have been much less frequent owing to diversities in our locations and other factors. These days, we connect mostly on the social media, making it a point to speak to each other at least once a day. We have had major changes in our lives, both of us have married and thankfully our husbands are very well aware and supportive of the wonderful sisterhood that we share. I wish we could meet more often, I know she wishes so too. Someday, we might be privileged enough to live in the same city and carve out a day or two for ourselves in months. *Touchwood* 

P.S. – She is one of the rarest people who wrote me an air mail, the funniest and most caring one I’ve received till now. I still cherish it and can’t help but share a peek at it with everyone.

*I have borrowed the title of this piece from the wonderful novel by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni*