Priceless.

"I’m coming to India in December.", she said. "Really!", I asked, hoping that this wasn’t some stupid joke. She laughed and nodded and I realised that it was true. I had not seen my best friend for over a year and a half, as she had shifted to Japan and I couldn’t wait to see her again.

"Why did you have to tell me now?", I asked her crossly. "Couldn’t you wait till November? Five months! That’s forever.", I rebuked as I had begun to realise how long these five months were now going to be. They’d never pass. I looked at her, peeved.
"I know right!", she said angrily, and all my anger melted away. I knew that December seemed ages away to her too. "Give me your address.", she said suddenly. "Huh?"I asked. My brain had begun to make a list of the things to do when she came here in December. 'Give me your address' had disturbed the brilliant wave of ideas that my brain had been working on. "Your address!, she repeated, slowly, as if I was someone who had a difficulty understanding English.
I gave her a 'seriously-dude?' look and asked her why she wanted my address right now. After all, she was going to come eons later. "Come on", she said. "The last time we talked was about 4 months ago. Who knows when we’ll get to talk next. Just give it to me. " Laughing, I told her my address as she wrote it down somewhere in her book.

For another hour or so, we talked about what we’d do when she’d come here in December. We decided how we would surprise all our other friends, how we’d spend the first weekend and then the second, and all the stuff we’d do together. Just talking about it made us happy and by the time we had finished discussing the plans, we had started cursing August, October and November that stood in the way of December and July. September was an exception because her birthday is in September and so is my other best friend’s. We talked a bit more and then, realising how much time had passed, said goodbye.

After I closed Hangouts, I went to the living room and danced around, singing 'Vasumati is coming'
to a random tune. Now that I think of it, my brother and grandparents’ something-is-seriously-wrong with-her-looks were totally justified.

Last Thursday, Vasumati messaged me again. "What time are you free tomorrow", it said. I had a whole load of homework to do and notebooks to complete. Friday was a holiday and so, the teachers had given as much homework as they possibly could. "It’s a long weekend. You must study and complete everything.", all of them had said. I told this to Vasumati and also asked her if she had wanted to video call. When she said yes, I told her that we could do it around 4, India time. I wasn’t going to study the whole day anyway and talking to her would be excellent.

The next day, as usual, I did absolutely nothing according to plan. By afternoon, I had watched Masterchef Australia, Schindler’s List, read a book, made a sketch and had not even opened a school book. It was almost four and owing to the fact that I had done nothing, I decided to tell Vasumati to skip the call and do it later, maybe on Sunday.
I closed the book I was reading, and got up. I looked around my room; it was pretty much what you can call a mess. Guests were to come for dinner, but I was the least interested in cleaning up. The bell rang while I was opening my email to send a message to Vasumati. I thought that the guests had most probably decided to come early, but, I’ve never been more wrong. Mum rushed to my room and asked me if I was ready. "Why would I be-"I began to say, but stopped mid-sentence.

A girl, who looked exactly like Vasumati entered my room and sat on my bed, like it belonged to her, at 4 o’ clock. I stared at her for a couple of seconds, blinked...I seriously did. Then, I got up and hugged her tightly, pulled back, looked at her, blinked a couple more times and then hugged her again.

She laughed, probably because of the look of absolute disbelief on my face. I realised quite later that I had been muttering "No Way...No Way...Whoa", over and over again. I laughed, with almost tears in my eyes and she did too.
It was crazy and amazing. I can’t put into words how happy I was, seeing her and how extremely truly bloody surprised I was.

For the next ten minutes, I tried to convince myself that this was real. This girl had really come to India from Japan and she had, given me a wonderful shock, more than a surprise. She told me how she had hidden from a couple of boys in our school who lived near her house to make sure that I didn’t find out she was here. She told me how the whole plan would have failed if I had picked up the phone to let her in the building instead of my mum. We talked, we laughed, took loads of pictures and had fun. She stayed at my place for the weekend and honestly, it was one of the best of my life.

The fact that someone would do this for me left me ecstatic. The joy that I felt when she, instead of her call came at 4 is priceless and something that I will, without a doubt, never forget.