My dearest most darling Namali,

I’ve started to write about you so many times over the course of our friendship. The words would come, but nothing was ever quite good enough. But tonight, high and hallucinating on an allergic reaction to cough syrup, I am finding the inspiration to write about you.

You’ve been alive for 30 years this Thursday, and for 23 of those 30 years you have played a vital role in my life. You’ve been my best friend; the witness of my life; the tie-breaker between head and heart; the sole voice of reason, & the soul voice of emotion; fellow rule breaker; good example; bad example; co-author of many unfinished works; co-conspirator of many broken hearts (though I do most of the breaking- I will always feel sorry for that Nam) and so many more.

You know how friends have stories? We don’t have stories. We have epic sagas of heartbreak and foul. We have dramas of epic proportion, with villains and plotlines. Like dreaming a relationship out of a friendship, seeing it come true and then see it fall apart. We have a single word that carries a year. We have killing time in a hotel bathroom to avoid a bad date; and end up having the best time. We have Moulin rouge. We have KCK; and we’re here to stay. We have embarrassment so deep, that we will take comfort in knowing it together.

You know how friends have dark secrets? Our secrets are the night. Sealed envelopes that are fading in locked drawers in forgotten places.

I know you have “other friends.” Older friends, geographically closer friends, ideologically similar friends, but really those “other friends” get air quotes. Yes I’m a bitch. I only bite if necessary.

We are light and laughter and music and long long silences and even longer conversations.

We fought once. Yes, we have one of those stories. It’s lame. You don’t eve remember the details. I remember some. It’s lame. We should have a bigger fight, let’s stage one… everything we do MUST be larger than life.

We have the kind of friendship that when I go to buy you a birthday card, I walk past the friendship section, right to the “wife/Lover” section because dear God the words are NOT EVER ENOUGH to describe us in “hallmark friendship terms.”

We’ve shared so much over the years. We’ve shared life, love, living spaces. We haven’t shared a man. Have we talked about it? I’ve thought about it. I was the one who ended up wild, you were the one with the reputation for being wild when we were younger. People are idiots. Wild is a synonym for Alive in my book.

For the love of what’s good, please don’t tell the fucking marijuana story again. I hate that one. I was so lame for awhile. And I can never find a lame enough story to match that one to take you down with. Bitch. I love you. You knew me at my lamest, and you loved me still. This is true love.

The heartbreak’s nam? The tears we shed over the boys? Man, we know how to feel baby. We feel so much and so deeply and we get hurt so bad, but we never let each other close up. We never shrivel up and become bitter or cold hearted or closed off. We open each other and stay open together because we have each other to always, always love. We DO NOT settle. It’s all or nothing when it comes to this fuel source of life that we call the love story. We make mistakes together and we remind each other that the risk is life. Love is just the result; it’s the risk that is the journey.

I’ve married you in my heart. All we have to do is make it legal. If we’re single at 40, or divorced at 50, let’s make one of those Hollywood romcom promises that best friends make and then blah blah blah whatever is the end of this paragraph.

Motorcycles; cars; orgasms; drugs; sex; emotions; self-reflections, self-analysis, self-abasement, self- confidence, a lot of selfies; books, writing, love, music, singing, swimming, competing, BSB-ing, spice girls-ing, but also Paul Simon on the drive back from Morawaka, becoming an honourary Kulatunga by pure force of will, Galle Lit festival- the first one, bus rides, car rides, walks on the beach, walks in the estate, walks through the city, homemade Bolognese, NEW YORK CITY!!! The Conditions of Self-Improvement, a legal binding document.

Fuck: as my “having a reaction to codeine” mind went on a little trip this has become a list of words that don’t mean anything to anyone else in the universe. Our friendship is a jumble of words, a language of its own, spoken by two individual souls. This is why I’ve never been able to write about you Nam. Some great literary works just don’t translate well into English.

I wrote to express how important you are to me; to declare with certainty that my life would not be my life without you; I wrote to reflect on the 23 years of friendship; of being a part of your life for most of your life. I wrote to remember that despite the time and distance we are the best of friends; a kind of absoluteness that isn’t found easily in the universe.

Instead I rambled incoherently through, and no one will understand what I’m trying to say.

But you will. You always do.

Happy Birthday my Queen.

Welcome to the dirty thirtees baby! We will make them count as much as we did with our tens, our teens, our twenties. Here’s to another decade of this love, this friendship. What would I do without you?

I love you Namali Premawardhana.

Lets be best friends forever.

Pavi