I was flat out on my back in a dark pink, plasticky chair, powerless to move. Bright light shone down my face, making it impossible for me to make out the others in the room. I could vaguely make out two forms and whilst I was trying to slowly slide away from the chair, one of them came near me. I could just make out a white mask that covered its features.

‘Would you like to move over here, love?’ it queried in a disembodied tone.

I was too scared to act.

‘Now, bite down on this and stay put’, it continued. Something blue and hard was thrust into my mouth and the next minute, a huge white machine, sort of like the Scream Extractor from Monsters, Inc was placed next to my face. Before I realised what was happening, the two figures ran out of the room and there was this high pitched ‘bzzzz’, while the lights flickered out and came back again.

This happened one more time and this time, I noticed the radiation light come on. I was being subjected to radiation! ARGH!

While I was still trying to digest that fact, my two tormentors came back and this time, they closed the doors.

‘Ok, now close your eyes and pretend you are somewhere far away’, crooned the Voice. I was trying to do that anyway when I turned my head a fraction and espied the masked figure advancing towards me with a huge syringe filled with a clear liquid. Oh dear God! First they subjected me to harmful rays and now they are drugging me. Even while my slow brain was computing this, the syringe full of bone numbing medicine was pushed into my delicate skin. I couldn’t feel. I was paralysed!

Even whilst my eyes were darting in terror, I was thinking what else they are going to do to me. That query was answered straightaway when I heard another strange noise – a high powered whirring sound, sort of like a power drill. Are they going to burrow holes in me now? Let me get out! Oh no! Too late.

Whilst one of them held on to my hands, the other one drilled away, chipping parts of me. She then poked me with another sharp instrument. Time and again, she brought out another instrument that made a whooshing sound, which made me bones turn into water.

Thus the torture went on for 15 minutes.

The masked voice looked up and suddenly went ‘go and clean up’. I slowly got up to my feet. I was feeling a bit woozy from the blood loss and the shock. I freshened up as much as I could in the tiny sink. But before I was done, I was dragged back to my chair and part two of the torture began in earnest.

I closed my eyes and imagined myself far away from the drills and other scary noises. In my mind, I was lying down on a beach, playing with little P in the sand. Even as I was starting on a sand castle, a hand touched my shoulder.

I came to with a start.

‘That’s it, I’m done. You can go now. We’ll see you real soon’, said the Voice.

I grabbed my things and ran away from the room as fast as my wobbly legs could carry. The ‘see you soon’ kept echoing in my head. Not if I can help it, mate.

I am never going to my dentist again.

How much do you believe in things like horoscopes, astrology, zodiacs..? Though I have never paid much attention to the first two, I admit to glancing at the prediction of the week and seeing what’s in store for Cancer. Though I’d never agree to being a firm believer, I really find I have so many characteristics of a typical Cancerean.

Whilst I do not walk sideways like a crab, I am rather afraid of getting hurt and tend to protect my easily wounded heart (hard to believe, I know!) with prickly layers of sarcasm. My dad used to tell me when I was in my early teens that if I don’t watch out, I might come across as ‘don’t care Bobby’ of St Clare’s (it is an Enid Blyton thing!) whilst the reality is far from it. But I have never changed in that regard – I never show my liking for something, purely because I am worried that it could somehow be used against me.

I also love the moon and the water – a night time stroll along the beach is my idea of an ideal time. (somebody take note!)

With all these, you’d thing I’d embrace fellow Cancereans as twin souls and bond with them like a piece of 4×4 and UniBond. Truth is, Cancereans tend to be my ‘most unable to get alongwith’ sort of people. Funny, innit?

“You can’t make old friends, you can only lose them and in losing them you walk around with a void inside that you can never adequately explain”, says Beth Kephart in Into the Tangle of Friendship.

I recently read this in the Readers’ Digest’s ‘Quotable Quotes’ section and it made me think of my old friendships and those that still continue to this day. I am still friends with my oldest friend, who I met when we were in class II of primary school. And of course, I have lost touch with scores of people, even cut off ties with some forcibly as things warranted.

One of them in particular, doesn’t exist anymore due to a difference of opinion between me and my then close friend (whom I shall call B). It has been three years now, since B and I had our spectacular, inter-continental, cyber fallout and though we do send each other one line missives regarding the most earth-shattering occurrences in the other’s lives, the friendship that once existed has well and truly died a memorable death.

When I was a little girl, I used to think that, much like our movie heroines, once I hit my teens, I would also have this big group of chattering friends, who would do pretty insane things together. Slumber party, midnight feasts (thanks to Enid Blyton), movies, trips to exotic locations, the odd song and dance number, you name it, we’ll do it. We will be the Notorious G.I.R.L.S and we will set the world on fire.

As always, reality was much different and rather than queening over one huge group of friends, I had two distinct groups of mates, which rather became a lifelong pattern. At school, our class was split into two different groups, according to our second language preferences. So we had the all Tamil groups and the all Hindi groups and I was the only one who ended up straddling these two groups – I was the only Tamil girl in a gang of four other Hindi girls. So I generally found myself occupying that unenvious no-man’s land – not really fitting in 110% with the hindi lot and being an outsider with my tamil lot as I wasn’t conoodling with them all the time.

Things didn’t change much when I went to college though my all-hindi gang remained my closest mates. Though our gang had split up by now, with each of us going in different ways, three of us, moi, B and other one whom I shall call A, still kept in reasonable touch and hung out whenever possible. These two were there for my milestones – broken heart, graduation, wedding, P’s first birthday (well one was – the other one was miles away in America) and life went on. These two were the ones I blabbed my heart to and though I met only A during my periodic visits home, I was quite thrilled when my trip coincided with B’s first trip home from US.

As this would be the first time B will be meeting two and half year old P, I was real excited. But days and weeks of planning never bore fruit and before long, it was time for B to return. To say I was disappointed that she didn’t meet P was like saying I am a quiet soul. I continued to feel the ire long after and A used to rag me about it. Months afterwards, when the three of us were in our different continents, I still couldn’t believe that one of my closest friends couldn’t even spare the time to see my child. The hurt went much deeper than most realised or understood. Even A used to rib me by saying ‘you are the only one who can have a proper, full-on fight on the Internet’. But what I felt wasn’t trivial or something I could just pooh-pooh away. It felt like a rejection; it felt like we did not matter to B anymore. She’s got her new family and friends and the child of an old mate doesn’t rank very high in the importance scales.

Looking back, I think the cracks started soon after I moved to the UK and B got engaged. I only found out by chance that she had got engaged in the first place, well after the event. When I saw the photos, I felt real upset as beaming at me from the pix was another one of our friends from school days who’s still B’s close friend. Never one to let sleeping dogs lie, I asked B how come she couldn’t find time to even tell me about her engagement when obviously, she had enough time to get everything else organised and could take the other girl with her. Though we made up after I had finishing ranting and raving, I still felt inordinately upset. As I sat nursing my feelings after the fallout, I couldn’t help but think of B making a trek to another city to visit this same friend whilst she couldn’t spare a few hours to visit me when we were in the same city, after four long years!

Am I sad over the dead friendship? Hell yeah! As A once told me, it was a friendship that had lasted for several years. Do I want a revival of the friendship, even if B’s for it? I am not sure. A childhood quote comes to mind:

Friendship is like a mirror:
Once broken, even if it is put back together
Cracks will always remain.