Day 16: The Angel & the Tea

OK. I accept the fact that I am breaking the most stringent rule here (I have taken permission from Shazia, though), set mutually by all of us, when we came up with the idea of this blog. The rule was that we will not, by any means, use any name of Sowmya, other than Sowmya itself, when referring to her in our writings. Accepted. We even went through 3/4^th of the blog in strict adherence of his rule.

However, the more I thought of it, the more difficult it became for me to continue sticking to this rule. For one simple reason. For me, one of her names is not just her pet-name or nick-name, which we were not allowed to use, but it is her identity for me.

That name is how I see Sowmya. That name is how I have come to know her. That name is how I think of her. That name is the alpha through omega of how I perceive her.

That name is Tambu.

It started as a stupid thing, I remember, when the erstwhile Deadly Dozen were at her place for a sleepover, or more like for a demolition derby. She was serving us food, and somehow the name cropped up. All of us know how it came into being, and my so called logic behind it.

I really didn’t expect the name to last. I hadn’t planned on that. But somehow, I began to address her by this name, and I was delighted to know that she responded to it, accepted it. That’s one of the things I’ll never forget. I know for a fact that she wouldn’t have done that if she didn’t like the name. And so before I knew it, people started picking it up too. Shazia began to use it (btw Shazia; Tambu says you identify with the name more than I do), and then others followed suit. I remember explaining the import of the word quite a number of times to people.

Then I imagine the name went through a process of gaining an identity, a personality of its own. In my mind at least, Sowmya and Tambu are two people, as different and as individual as, let’s say, two tea leaves. Same, yet different. Tambu is her brand now, simply because there can be many like Sowmya. But only one Tambu. Our Tambu.

Tambu becomes her in more ways than I can pen down, do you not agree, people? On every day that goes by, Tambu adds a new dimension, a new facet, a new glint to what Tambu stands for. Today, I’m sure none of us can imagine what it’d have been like to have known this angel as only Ponnada Sowmya Sundari Venkatrao Sita Mahalaxmi, minus the Tambu.

Today, we can’t really say what will happen to the “The 6 of Us” a few years down the line. We may stick together, we certainly hope to. But even if we can’t, there’ll be many things we will remember each other for. But certain attributes of all us will be forever embedded in our hearts. Shazia’s godliness, Nikhil’s mein-kya-karu attitude, Avishkar’s immovable positiveness, Avinash’s resourcefulness, my jokes.

But with what we have done here, through the means of this blog, goes much beyond that. This time we spent on her blog, is like that time of the day, the afternoon, when you are kind of tired from working so hard since morning, but you still have a lot of work to do. So you refresh yourself with some tea.

That’s called tea-time.

This, We will call, T Time.

;-)