My lovely friend Harjit is getting married tomorrow, and I'm really excited. Not only is it the first time a close friend of mine has tied the knot, but also it will be my first Indian wedding. I'm looking forward to finding out how they do things!
Harjit and I first met at Aviva, where I started working when I was 21. At first I was pretty scared of her, she's pretty sassy and has lots of attitude. The whole department had just been relocated to my home town, and Harjit had moved from Birmingham to show us how it was done. She definitely knew her stuff and had to put up with us numpties who didn't know anything, while living in a hotel in the week, far away from all of her family.
Soon after I started, we got moved onto the same team, and I realised under the sassiness was a really kind hearted and funny girl. Sometimes she was funny because of the jokes she made, and the observations she had of the things us northerners did and other times it was because of the things she did. Always telling us how someone had once compared her to an Indian Cheryl Cole, which would lead her to swing her hair around trying to do a geordie impression, or being very demanding to the ladies in the canteen, "I want 5 beans, no butter, and no mayonnaise!"
At some point my housing contract didn't work and I was faced with moving out of my apartment with nowhere to go, so Harjit and I made plans to move in together. We moved into a lovely house in Norton in Sheffield. I remember the first day we were moving in, and she turned up with her dad who I'd heard often carried a sword. I was pretty impressed!
We had some good times in our little house, a chav themed house warming, a few issues with spiders and me trying to colour my hair blonde. My favourite memory in the house is when I walked in and sensed something was wrong. I walked upstairs and noticed the bathroom window was wide open, and Harjit's door was ajar. I walked into her room and was really shocked. Clothes were everywhere, her TV was face down on the floor, her drawers were out of the chest. We'd been robbed. I quickly called her and told her we'd been burgled. I described the scene in her room and she burst out laughing, reassuring me that's just how she'd left it!
A few lessons I learned from Harj:
1. Bread is really tasty, especially without anything on it, and particularly if you put something realllly dry in the middle of it. Infact, the dryer the better. Yum.
2. Tilting your head to one side while having your photo taken means guaranteed fabulousness.
3. Cats should be avoided at all costs, even if it means slamming the door and locking your housemate out of the house, even if she doesn't know what the flip is going on.
4. Pulling the gun fingers out while dancing earns guaranteed gangster points.
5. The best way to pass a boring commute to work is to point at the most bizarre looking person you can find and say to the passenger 'What's your boyfriend doing here?'.
6. Google It. Follow any big statement with those two words. People have died from the heat in India. In Birmingham, if you have a car crash, people will stab you. Just Google It.
7. Don't peek in other people's temples, especially when they wouldn't peek in yours.
I was really sad when I had to move out to start saving for my adventures the next year, but we still got to see each other at work. No matter how tedious the work was, or if we were having bad days, we always managed to have a good laugh together.
She deserves lots of happiness, she definitely is one of a kind, my favourite coconut! I couldn't let her start this new chapter of her life without sharing a little photo evidence of the times we spent together!
Have a lovely day Harj!
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