Shivani

SHIVI. SEVENTEEN. I literally CANNOT — I have known you since Class IX when you sat next to me in maths and quietly slid your notebook over so I could copy the trig identities because Ms. Padma was, in your words at the time, "being unhinged about sin theta" — and now we are SEVENTEEN and we are doing CET prep together and you are still slightly better at maths than me and I am still slightly better at chemistry than you and the BALANCE IS PERFECT. Three years of Indiranagar walks, ONE HUNDRED Sunday filter coffees at Airlines Hotel, that one ICONIC night at Toit when we got asked for ID and Maya — MAYA — pretended to be 24, I cannot — I love you, you ridiculous overachieving Bharatanatyam-genius human being. Pour out the filter coffee. The girls are coming. — Riya · PR officer for life

SHIVI MY LOVE — writing this from a dorm room in Singapore at 2:47 AM because the time difference is, frankly, against us. I am SO mad I'm missing this. SO mad. We were SUPPOSED to be doing Class XII together and instead I'm here at UWC eating microwave Maggi and FaceTiming you at weird hours and watching you smash your boards from across an ocean. You are the BEST of us — the one who studies the hardest AND still shows up to Brahmin Coffee Bar on Sundays AND still does Bharatanatyam four times a week AND has more screen time on your phone than ALL of us combined (this is a fact, your mom showed me). Seventeen, baby. I'll be home for Christmas and we are doing the WHOLE Bangalore tour — Vidyarthi Bhavan, Brahmin Coffee Bar, Airlines, Koshy's, the lot. I love you exactly as much as I did when we were both wearing braces in Class IX. Possibly more. — Dev

Shivu kanna — I am writing this on a Tuesday afternoon in the kitchen while you are at tuitions because Riya asked me to and because seventeen years ago today, in Manipal Hospital, your father held you for the first time and then very dramatically informed the nurse that you were going to be a doctor. Seventeen years later, kanna, you are studying for CET and telling me very firmly that you do not, in fact, want to be a doctor, you want to do "something with computers and design" which sounds, to me, very modern and slightly terrifying. I will be honest with you the way I do not always know how to be in person — I am extremely proud of you. I worry about your phone (yes, kanna, I know how many hours a day you are on Instagram, your screen time tells me). I worry that you do not sleep enough. I worry about CET. I worry about the way you have started saying "literally" before every sentence. But I do not, ever, worry about who you are becoming. You are kind to your grandmother. You take dance class seriously. You are loyal to your friends in a way that I, at your age, did not know how to be. Happy seventeenth, kanna. I made paayasam. Your favourite. Come to the kitchen. — Amma

Dear Shivani, It is your dance teacher writing — eleven years now since your mother first brought you to my class at Nrithyakshetra, on a Saturday afternoon in 2015, when you were six years old and unable, for the first three months, to stand still for the namaskara at the start of class. You have come, in eleven years, an enormous distance. I have, in thirty-one years of teaching Bharatanatyam, taught perhaps four hundred students. Of those, perhaps thirty have done their arangetram. Of those thirty, perhaps four — including you — I have known from the very first class. It is a particular kind of joy to watch a student you have known from the age of six perform her arangetram at seventeen. I am, even now, when I close my eyes, able to see you in the small kurta your mother dressed you in for that first class, frowning at the mirror, deciding very seriously that you were going to learn this properly. You did. You have. On the seventh of August you will dance your arangetram at the Chowdiah Hall and I will sit in the front row, the way I have sat in the front row of every arangetram I have ever produced, and I will, very quietly, be very proud. Happy seventeenth, Shivani. Practice the alarippu. The mirror is your friend. — Aparna · your guru

Dear Shivani, I hope this finds you well. It is Sara, from Bombay — we met in November of 2024 at the Cathedral Inter-School Debate, where you were on the Delhi Public School Bangalore team arguing in favour of the motion "This House Would Decriminalise All Personal Drug Use" and I was, somewhat to my own surprise, on the opposition. You won. I should say so on the record, since I have not actually said it to you directly: you were the best speaker in the round. We have been, since November of 2024, what I think you would call "debate-conference friends" — the kind of friendship that exists in WhatsApp messages and the occasional voice note and the certainty that we will, twice a year, see each other in a slightly cold classroom at Modern School Vasant Vihar or Cathedral Bombay and pick up exactly where we left off. I find this kind of friendship strangely precious. I hope your CET prep is going well. I hope you win at Frank Anthony in October — I am told you are going. I hope, more than anything, that you remember to argue, as you so often do, from a position of curiosity rather than certainty. It is your great strength as a debater. It will be your great strength in everything else. With warm wishes for a very happy seventeenth, and with affectionate regards from Bombay, Sara Mehta · Cathedral & John Connon · Class XII

okay so Shivi — I am, as you know, the one who set up the reveal timer for this wall and I have, in the last 72 hours, checked it FOUR times to make sure it actually goes live at midnight on the 30th and does not, like, leak early. This is the level of operational rigour you inspire in me, Shivi. I am studying for the NLSIU CLAT and I should be doing past papers and instead I am, voluntarily, project-managing a birthday surprise for a girl I have known since Class IX who I am 100% certain is going to top our school in the CBSE boards next March. You are insufferable about it. I love you. ALSO — about that night at Toit — for the record, I did NOT pretend to be 24, I told the bouncer I was an "almost-adult law student" which is a TRUE statement and which got us in anyway because the bouncer was, on reflection, also probably 19. I rest my case. — Maya · future SC advocate

S — Writing this from the Bangalore airport on my way back from a work trip to Hyderabad, where I just spent four days running a sales review and missing my little sister's seventeenth birthday by three days. I am sorry. I will make it up to you. I have, by my count, missed exactly two of your birthdays in seventeen years (this one and the year I was in my final year at IIM-A, which Mum has not let me forget). I think about you a lot, S. I think about the fact that I was seven when you were born and I was supposed to be very upset that I was no longer the only child in the house and instead, within about four hours of you coming home from Manipal Hospital, I had decided you were the best thing that had ever happened to me, and I have, in the seventeen years since, not seriously revised that opinion. Mum says you're going to take the CETs and then probably end up at some IIT and then probably end up at some American grad school and then probably end up being far smarter than me, which — accurate. I will be very proud. I am already very proud. Happy birthday, kiddo. The flight is boarding. The present is hidden in the kitchen behind the masala dabba. Don't tell Mum I told you. — Arnav · the bhaiya · 24 · running on airport filter coffee

Shivi paati — Nanaiya seventeen years ago, na unna paatha, neyo so chinna, so chinna, like a thimble. Periya kannu, hairu romba less, anaye loud — even at the hospital you were crying like you had opinions already. I told your appa that day, "ivanga ondaa pakka anchored girl aaga porra." I was right. I am, generally, right. Tell your appa. Kanna, I have lived through Independence, through the Emergency, through your appa learning to drive on a scooter in 1989 which was a deeply traumatic experience for the whole family, through your bhaiya going to IIM-A, and through every single one of your sixteen birthdays before this one. I have, on every one of them, made you payasam in the morning before anyone was awake. This year — kanna, this year I am eighty-three, my knees are not what they were, your amma has — very firmly — told me I am not allowed to be on my feet at 5 am. So your amma will make the payasam this year, with the recipe I taught her. It will be, na, nearly correct. Happy seventeenth, Shivi paati. Idhu unaku oru periya year — Class XII, the boards, the entrance exams. Don't worry. Eat properly. Sleep. Call your paati. — Paati