Dear Nisa (a.k.a. The Diva),

Where on Earth are you?

Well, I actually have the answer to that one. Some city called Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. Where you have been whisked off for a month (then a month and a half, now possibly two months tops, and we are beginning to fear the worst for you) on some high-falutin’ consulting project. Answering that part is easy.

The tough part is handling the day-to-day realities of your not being here.

Perhaps you have been away for so long now, that you may have forgotten about us, your family. The Family. Not your flesh and blood perhaps, but the family we made together, us four poor singletons stuck in the Big City, far away from our hometowns and loved ones.

Henny, Nisa, Jason and Kenny. The Datin, The Diva, Boyboy and me. And now we are but three.

Remember when we used to play our game of ‘musical chairs’ over dinner? When only three of us can make it to mealtime, and we would be sitting at a table in a fancy restaurant or a roadside mamak, and there will always be a fourth chair, vacant to represent the missing family member? How we would point towards the chair when speaking lovingly of the one not present, and of course, when we would gossip gleefully about him or her.

You see, Family can do this. There is no malice when we know each other this well. We each take turns to be the much-maligned topic of conversation. There is no ill-will here, only love.

For we know each other too well, and we know too much also, sometimes. We are terrible at keeping secrets. Like the time I told you I broke up with my boo (and was under no circumstances to repeat it to another member of the Family), you managed to let slip to Jason ever so casually. And he, in turn, somehow repeated this to Henny. And in under an hour, the Datin was on my case, interrogating me — O we can’t be trusted with secrets, no!

Yet we continue to share our lives and loves with each other — evenings and weekends and holidays will see us clustered like hamsters around a hearth; it’s Family Time, we tell each other; we’ve had enough of Work, Dating and Diets That Fail (Yet Again).

Family Portrait: Do you remember how happy we were?

How you or The Datin would cook for us, and I would wash up the dishes (official duties to my fair ladies), and Jason… well, Jason would sit in front of the TV and watch Astro, mostly. (Outsiders would insist this is because he is the youngest and we pamper him so, but we heartily disagree: it’s only cos we haven’t found a way to make him move, yet.)

These days, however, not so. Musical chairs can’t be played when it’s the same threesome over and over again. We tire of each other. We long for your spontaneous sense of the inappropriate, your masculine sneers and how you will find joy in physically abusing Jason and I. Your high sense of drama. (We don’t call you The Diva for nothing.) How you would coerce us into watching lame and brain-drained chick flicks… and have us laughing and peeing our pants by the end of the movie.

O dear Nisa: Where on Earth are you?

You will come back one day, won’t you? Don’t wait too long; we may not survive. Or we may jolly well audition for a replacement.

(Wanted: Twentysomething female with brilliant, white teeth, perfectly-coiffed hair, legs that linger till eternity, an hourglass figure, a PhD or two, a plethora of credit cards to take fellow Family members out fine dining, … what? I said a replacement. Doesn’t have to be the same Diva. If we’re replacing her, we might as well get an upgrade, right?)

I jest, my dear. (Mostly.)

Come back to us, my love. Come back to us…