14th February 1997... four heartbroken 18 year olds...Mich, Manisha, Paps and moi. Now, I am not going to get into the painful details of the heartbreak, but suffice to say that we were feeling miserably down-in-the-dumps. And the fact that it was Valentine's Day and we were trapped in a 300-women strong hostel, where of the 300 some 250 odd had boyfriends of which some 200-odd were in Delhi and these 200 odd would start sending flowers and chocolates right from 6 am! *whew* Yeah, so there we were, the four of us- heartbroken, miserable and down-in-the-dumps sitting in Paps' room and moping, when suddenly Mich jumped up and yelled, "We will not sit around and mope.. we don't need men to make Valentine's Day happen.. we will go out and have a blast!" This war-cry of sorts kind of cheered everybody up and soon we jumped out of the hostel and hit the GK M-Block market. Given that curfew time for us was 7:30 pm, we just picked up some chocolates and got back to the hostel.
Manisha, ever the one to come up with interesting ways of eating anything, suggested that we melt the bars in our coffee mugs and add a touch of cinnamon to it (try it people, its awesome!) and kind of drown-our-sorrows in chocolat! With our mugs of melted Dairy Milks and with Mich's tape recorder playing I'll Survive, we sang along, laughed and cried and hugged till all the pain was washed away and we felt much better about life. That was one of the best Valentine's Days of my life thus far! A day which started out miserably but one that ended spectacularly!! Even today, when the four of us are separated by miles and two oceans, we think back to 1997 and laugh our hearts out!
Girlfriends... really, what the hell would one do without them!!!!!
