I first saw her as she stepped past the gate on the path leading to our house. Frail, heavy rimmed glasses and a non-descript cotton sari. “Ma, there’s someone at the gate; she looks so like Lika-di”. Ma stopped. The pain, deliberately swept aside over years gradually seeped through her, sad and tired she mumbled – “it is Lika-di”.

 “But isn’t Lika-di ……..”. I was stumped.

We called her Lika-di. She insisted – Modhu was too commonplace a moniker for someone so vivacious; she was not common. Dark, dancing eyes, and a luscious knee-length braid was what was etched in most memories. And yes, the cotton saris that she loved wearing from a very young age, pressed neatly under the thick mattresses overnight.

These were government allotted quarters, two-stories, four to a block, sixteen to a row, seven rows to a colony. Small, reasonably neat gardens, hedged with didoneas, grew assorted fruit trees, nurtured aggressively.  A row of houses, two half-rows, and a drain bounded the playground – home to epic mud-pat battles during the rains. It was great fun, the way you called out to your friends from the narrow metalled streets, to complete their homework and get together for a game of hide-and-seek or football. Amusing too, how the young wives, waved shyly, to their husbands, as they made their way to the office.

Growing up in Bijal was like traipsing across a garden full of activities, each moment laden with fun, comfort and promise. First generation settlers, desperately seeking acceptance among others, similarly blindsided by career opportunities that uproot deep cultural bonds. A labored downplay of your uniqueness, which till recently, was your pride, and will be again, once you assimilated. Energy, anticipation and frisson, all blended together in the cauldron that spewed out a new community.

Lika-di’s dad, too, like mine, had opted to bring up his young family in the bold new city of Bijal. Home to the gigantic engineering enterprise, the pride of newly industrializing India, Bijal could boast of almost nothing else. The factory township was the only oasis in an arid land, punctuated by clumps of unruly bushes, and randomly sprinkled plum and custard-apple trees. The township, like other similar jewels of modern India, was more or less self-sufficient, with its own power plants, water filtration units, schools and a club-house that enrolled as its members, only the families of senior managers at the firm. Oddly named clusters of houses, called colonies sprung up, each with its own complement of shopping units, playgrounds, and often churches, temples, mosques and gurudwaras.

Lika-di seemed to have been always there – comfortable and familiar like she would have been had she seen the township grow brick-by-brick. She was older than me, and all my friends, and that never mattered to either. She was pretty, and more than that, a great friend. And while with us, she was just another one of us. In our own way, we were grateful that she took time out for us, not that we ever said as much. We had our pride, after all. And secretly, each one of us loved her dearly. We clamored for her attention, and the ultimate joy was chatting her up on any flimsy pretext.