The Sim-ilar Archive Of Every Double Ganger

Chapter 4

We meet new people all the time. The first new people we meet are our parents with their doting eyes, relatives with their cooing voices and siblings with awed faces. We look at them, and we form relationships. It is as simple as that. We do not have to think about the first thing we will say to them. We do not have to worry about the probability of awkward silences. There is no conscious thought at all.

Then we go to school with our back packs bigger than us, and shoe laces always unlocked, and we sit beside a new partner and suddenly a friendship is born. It simply starts with a mutual thought and off we are, running. Sometimes we forget these new people the next day and sometimes we take them forwards, towards rational thought.

I once had a friend called Chinky. And by the time I reached The Conscious Thought Process, I had already lost her. There are the people we meet and chill with till we know better. There are the people we just randomly take to the other side without a thought.

Then there are those people we run into after our minds know how to connect. The people who resemble us in our thoughts and in our feelings.

I've never had to think about 'making friends'. They were just handed to me on a silver platter by my school. So, I do not know the standard protocol. I do not know the greetings we are supposed to give. I do not know the things you are allowed to say and things that are considered rude.

So, when I received that email from Vasudha, I was in a state of mixed thoughts. On one side, I was excited at the prospect of meeting somebody new, especially since she looked like me. I've always had a thing for the dramatic. It is also the reason I have successfully memorized all the parts of Simran in Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge. On the other side, I was consumed with an exploding bout of nervousness.

I had no idea where to start. How can you commit to meeting somebody if you do not know if there could be anything to talk about. If this was school, I would have gathered a group of girls to giggle their way through the conversation. But I couldn't do that. So, it was only me and my brilliance.

I decided a consultation with Google Sir was in order. I went through all the possible fun places that we could come across. But if you live in India there is one thing you already obviously know. And that is that there is more of Akshay Pure Vegs' than any cool place to hang out. But sometimes, just sometimes somebody catches a brain wave and makes a place I would actually like. And those rare diamonds are a sight to behold.

There was one such place that I always wanted to go. It was always a part of those top ten lists. It was called Ssong Café and it was as far from my home as it could possibly be. It was the sort of chic place that lands itself on Instagram, what with their coffees and books and board games. And I think that it would be highly impossible to get bored in a place like that. Thus, I came to a decision that it was the place to be.

I wrote her an email saying,

Hey!

Simran here!

I got your email. Sure! We should totally meet up. There is this place in Baner which seems pretty cool! Let me know if that is okay with you! 😊 The day after noon at let's say....4 o' clock? How does that sound?

A while later I received a mail from her saying that it sounded good. And that was that. The meet was set. And backing away now would be too rude.

And as it neared afternoon a day later I was still pretty skeptical about this entire thing. I kept thinking back to the fact that she had actually taken the initiative to look for my name on Facebook and gotten my email address. I wondered why she didn't just text on Messenger. Might be trying to be a little bit formal. And I found that really funny because I couldn't think of even one person under 18 who would do that. I had also countered her initiative and checked her on Facebook. There was barely anything on it. A few family photos and a post or two about patriotism.

But I could see from the photos that her background was relatively rural. Rural, but still rich. The story of the Indian Economy. But she still seemed well versed with English and just felt like a proper city person.

Not to generalize anything but here a lot of people in the rural areas do not behave like she does.

But that was all the information I had of her. And if she had been through my account she definitely knew more than enough about me.

She was my stranger twin, my doppelganger. She had the same sloping mountain of a nose as mine. She could easily be mistaken as me by most.

But she had a whole different world inside of her. An entire life with the almost same face. And I didn't know anything about her.

I didn't know anything at all .