A note to foreground this piece: On a cold January morning in 2014 when I was a miserable lawyer dipping in and out of the Delhi High Court six days a week, I wrote this as a dispatch to my best friend. I was ailing mentally and bruised with the legal dramas forever unfolding all around me. At the time, all I wanted to do was to curl into a corner and be caressed and nurtured and nourished by the love that only a bestie can give. I sent this gingerly over to her via email and she immediately asked me to see if I can get it published in some place. I scoured through my facebook friend list of the time and found that Aastha Manchanda ran this homegrown website for intimate writing and observations called Helpost. After I shared this piece with Aastha, she responded in the positive. Between writing this and sharing this with Aastha, a good nine-month period elapsed. That gestation period was perhaps me trying to find some confidence in myself. This nine-month period was also when I quit law for good and moved to Chennai to pursue journalism (something that was still as far removed from the real “meat” of writing as it could be). Today I felt like reproducing these very words for my newsletter as a way to hold them close. Over the last decade a lot of times I have found myself looking for this essay, but the research would yield no results. This essay here is a placeholder for the memory of a 10-year-ago me, a writing self forever in conversation with the world outside, the confidence a friend can show and what magic it can spin. Hope you enjoy reading this essay on what’s essentially friendship and this reading list I curated for friendship essays.

Being naked is not a physical state, it’s not perceptible to the human eye, nor is it apparent on the periphery of the human body.