“I know that face!” I said to myself even as I struggled to place it. It was the first time that the co-founders of 11&more were meeting…well, virtually at least. And I had this odd feeling of deja vue…

When I saw Monica, I felt the tingling of something familiar, something that I couldn’t quite shake. As the months passed and we had regular video-chats, the voice at the back of my mind whispered repeatedly, infuriatingly, that I knew her from somewhere. But I always pushed the thought away. After all, my instincts are usually wrong.

Finally, after viewing some of her beautiful wedding photos on Facebook, the bulb suddenly flashed.

‘I do know that face!’, I thought, ‘she was in my primary school class when I was 9 years old!!’.

I felt chills as the 20+ year memories rushed back. Like me, Monica had stood out in our class because she was ethnic. As a result, she immediately attracted my attention as a potential kindred spirit in the cliquey, often stifling environs of our exclusive British private girls’ school.  Alas, we never got the chance to be great friends—she was much more outgoing than me as well as good at sports (at least, according to my foggy memories), and so quickly joined the ‘cooler’ circles.

I remember one incident, the defining moment of our almost-friendship, where she laughed at me for kicking the ball in the wrong direction during a class soccer game. I felt mortified—my one potential ally had turned against me!

After that, I remember little—she left England after just 6 months to return home to Asia and my memories of her faded. Until now.

Reconnecting with her after all these years has been exhilarating. Call it fate, or cosmic karma perhaps, but after diverging for the last two decades, our paths have somehow crossed again in the most startling way. I wish I could go back in time and tell the shy, aloof, 9-year-old me that I would find great friendship someday. That connecting with people wouldn’t be such a struggle. Now, I think I have finally found the kindred spirit I had hoped for when I first met her.

And 9 others too. I love you, 11andmore☺

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By Ahalya
Photograph from http://www.thelondonmagazine.co.uk/