Second graders to soul sisters

Sooni Taraporevala 64 is an awardwinning filmmaker scriptwriter and independent still photographerRashida Mustafa 64 is a Manchesterbased psychologist and teacherTHE sevenyearolds bonded early and inextricably over a game they invented Sooni Taraporevala and Rashida Mustafa nee Vahanvaty were giggling second graders when they played Travellers and Witches using the gym hobby horse outside their Queen Mary School classroomA year after they embarked on coauthoring a book with grand plans of marketing it ldquoOur inspiration was Miss Billimoria fondly known as Billy Goat who would write plays print and sell them in school to usrdquo says Sooni ldquoRashida and I have been bound by fiction Whether it was stories we read or wrote in each other we found kindred souls There was nobody else I shared my fantasies problems and insecurities with When she was absent even for a day I really missed herrdquoIn Class VII the pair proved rebellious enough to nearly be expelled Summoning both sets of parents the principal Miss Shelton warned Sooni she would be deported to the north pole Rashida to the south Much pleading and apologising ensued before being allowed to stayAs 11thgraders holding the dramatics competition cup they tied for judged by Pheroza Shroff Godrej Pics courtesySooni TaraporevalaGood at elocution drama and debates they were intense rivals Rashida of Nightingale house Sooni of Joan of Arc ldquoAt interschool competitions we were on the same team against Cathedral lsquosnobsrsquordquo laughs Sooni Now settled in Manchester Rashida reveals that the two would incessantly pass notes between themselvesmdashldquoThis happened to the consternation of everyone who ever tried to teach us Our dialogue continued through the day the night the weekend through vacations illnesses journeys moving out marrying until this very day There was no doubt when I needed shelter I crept into her home We took it for granted Thatrsquos how it works You roll out your life for each other Itrsquos not Bollywood It was indeed BombayrdquoldquoI catch myself thinking lsquoIf Sooni was here I would she would we wouldrsquo Psychologically we call them life scripts the things we say the people we speak to in our early days which play themselves out through our lives Irsquom so comfortable around the artefacts of her life the Soonaiji Agiary at the end of her lane Parsi rituals their food which I love more than my own Irsquove tried to replicate the patties I ate in her home with a dozen different versions of their sweet mince mix It never tastes as amazing than at her dinner table At some point we merge into one another I treasure that enhancement of my identityrdquoThey discovered with interest that their mothers had attended the same school St Annersquos In Rashidarsquos room of her Nagpada house Taj Manzil the girls licked her motherrsquos tamarind chutney with relish ldquoShirin Aunty was a fantastic cook She put Rashida and me to shame publishing several bestselling cookbooks on Bohri food that ran into multiple editionsrdquo says Sooni ldquoI loved eating around their traditional thaal and seeing the women wear the ghagra choli and chunni decades before lehengas became de rigueurrdquoIn that neighbourhood they were the pyaliwalarsquos regular customers who devoured ldquokhatta carcinogenic red paste balls we called lsquoclayrsquordquo Sooni recalls ldquoInstead of a more direct route home from school we walked to Gowalia Tank to stuff our faces at the panipuriwala chanawala and golawala depending on what money we hadrdquo Banned from munching on the street in school uniform they warily kept a lookout for teachers or tattletale studentsThen Rashida boarded Bus No 48 to Byculla while Sooni went back to Cozy Building at August Kranti MargAn only child Sooni envied Rashidarsquos home overrun with cousins in an extended family and created a sister in Poona for herself A concoction of the imagination her mother dealt with admirably Rashida recollectsmdashldquoI learnt from Freny Aunty who nodded feebly at Soonirsquos fabricated sister One day my son in Manchester told friends he had a dog and a brother kept in the attic Confronted by an English parent demanding to know if this was true I remembered to gulp lsquoyesrsquo Freny Aunty had prepped my son Murtaza for Campion Schoolrsquos entrance test and he ran backwards down Aksa beach with Rumi Uncle her fatherrdquoHow have they worn the years of contact across continents ldquoFor me we never separated When I was in America I looked forward to Rashidarsquos letters in her undecipherable to others scrawl and talked about her so often my American friends felt they knew herrdquo Sooni says ldquoRashida was one of the first people I shared my scripts with besides my mother I still do and benefit greatly from her feedback Though we disagree about a great many things always have and always will the love and respect are always there too Wersquove seen each other grow get married have children in her case grandchildren Rashida is the sister I never hadrdquoTheir paths long since separated geographically the friends spent a lovely day in London when Sooni was at the Abbey Road Studios working on her 2020 Netflix movie Yeh Ballet the first Indian film to be soundmixed at this iconic space ldquoThat was truer than the time and space between It was an intense sense of continuityrdquo Rashida says ldquoSitting in an armchair in her room I felt 60 years deep There were several things we could not say or did not the muddle of our loyalties and complexities of lifehellip but I have never felt another heart or my heart as palpable as on that dayldquoAs a teacher a psychologist and the maker of a happiness test I like to think I know myself and know people But I was taken aback when my own analyst asked me last year in Manchester after we had done a musical called Woman of my Dreams lsquoWho is the woman of your dreamsrsquo Those of us who have lived in Mumbai experience how true this feeling is in another world when boundaries were so thin you could slip through them like moving in alternate realities I think that is the very network which supports this city given it a character making it built to lastrdquoAuthorpublisher Meher Marfatia writes monthly on city friendships You can reach her at mehermarfatiamiddaycomwwwmeher marfatiacom