Once Upon a Time- Part 1

"Damn! I'm late again. She is going to kill me." Malvika muttered to herself as she rushed to cross the road. There wasn't anything out of the ordinary about Malvika on first glance. She had the ability to blend into her surroundings, her petite structure helping her. She still had a 15 minute auto drive to reach the decided location and went about trying to find an auto who would come for the meter charge than multiples of the same.

Vidhya tucked her fringe behind her ear and waited at the corner table with a cup of tea scanning the crowd through the steam for the woman who was to be here 15 minutes ago. Clear, simple and sophisticated. That had to be the first things which struck anyone when they saw Vidhya. She stood out in the local crowd. It wasn't only her height; there was an aura around her that commanded respect.

It had been 3 years since they had met. Only a year since they had rekindled their friendship. A friendship which many wondered at. They were opposites- Malvika and Vidhya. Malvika was sensitive and unafraid of wearing her heart on her shoulders. Vidhya never let people see her anything but either cool,collected and cheerful or hot headed. Malvika needed to work hard to hit sixties in academics while Vidhya effortlessly touched the eighties. However Vidhya was the creative one between the two, far more expressive and romantic than what many assumed. Malvika was the cleverer of the two. She knew what one could do for her. Most people felt Malvika was the introvert and Vidhya was the extrovert. In reality, people knew as much about Vidhya as they knew about Malvika which was almost nothing.

Despite the huge number of friends and acquaintances, Vidhya shared her thoughts, feelings and worries with only her closest set of friends who were a group of 6.To these 6 people, Vidhya was extremely sensitive, supportive, warm, caring and at times vulnerable unlike the Vidhya the rest of the world saw at first glance. Of this 6, Malvika had been the closest. Hardly anything was left untold between the 2 of them. They knew each other inside out. At least, thats what Vidhya had believed until she found out to the contrary.

Needless to say, the shattering of the belief led to more than a few tears.