By Sharmila Nair

MALAYSIA - YOU never saw the end coming. You have known your BFF (Best Friend Forever) for almost all your life and never in your wildest dream did you imagine that the friendship would ever go kaput. But it did. So, how now?

Well, you carry on with your life.

As much as it would be difficult for you to do so, there is nothing much you can do right? It is not your fault that your ex-BFF is a stubborn as a mule, I'm-always-right-and-I'm-not-going-to-back-down type of idiot...err, person.

"My best friend, sorry, my ex-best friend is that type of person, exactly," says Lavanya Joseph.

That doomed-from-the-beginning friendship started when Lavanya met Leng during the orientation period in a college in Subang Jaya. Sitting next to each other, Lavanya and Leng Lee first bonded by grumbling about how boring the orientation was.

Since then, and pretty much of their whole college life, Lavanya and Leng did everything together. They had breakfast and lunch together; walked to the bus stop together; shopped after classes together; in short, they found a best friend in each other.

"I was new to the town, and I didn't know anybody. Leng was nice enough to show me around and take me to her home whenever I felt like having some home cooked meal," says Lavanya, 24.

In fact, Lavanya thought of Leng as the sister she never had.

"We were so similar in so many ways. We loved the same fashion houses, music, movies and everything else. Leng basically was the Chinese version of me," Lavanya says.

Lavanya and Leng even decided to be each other's bridesmaid one day.

Well, that was not part of Life's plan, unfortunately.

After almost four years of friendship, Lavanya and her bestie Leng, had a fallout - of all things, over a boy.

"Of course, it has to be about a boy. What else can drive girls apart?" she asks.

Their similar tastes in everything in life proved to be disastrous when they both realised that they had a thing for their classmate, Johnny.

How did they come to notice that it was the same boy they had a crush on?

"Well, Leng said it first. She told me that she liked Johnny and immediately after, I blurted out 'I do too'," says Lavanya, a PR executive.

In the beginning, they just laughed it off and planned to do everything crazy girls with huge crushes on the same boy do. They flirted shamelessly; they stalked (only in the campus), made googly eyes and dreamt about a white wedding together.

The problem only started when they both realised that they had more than just a girly crush on Johnny. The problem then escalated when Leng found out that Lavanya had asked Johnny out on a date.

"She went ballistic. I don't know what happened but she reacted as if I had murdered her mother. She called me names and said that I had been using her to get closer to Johnny and finally snatched him away from her," says Lavanya.

"I thought that I had know everything about Leng, but obviously I didn't know anything about her ."

Lavanya didn't go through with the date, out of respect to her best friend of several years, but it didn't do anything to soften Leng's heart.

She soon found out that her best friend had cut her off from all aspects of her life - Facebook, Friendster, phone contact list, etc.

"The most shocking thing she did was when she posted a message in Facebook saying 'My best friend is dead'. I was so hurt and bewildered that she would actually go that far because of a boy who wasn't even that cute to begin with!"

That wasn't even the hard part, Lavanya says. The explaining she had to do with others was the worst. Everybody was suddenly interested in knowing why she wasn't talking to Leng anymore.

It has been two years since Lavanya had spoken to her former best friend.

"Well, I guess I won't even be going to her wedding then," says Lavanya.

In Karina Harun's case, it was her friends who were wondering why she wasn't talking to them anymore.

"I met Linda at 14, and we were pretty much dubbed each other's soulmates. People met us and thought we were sisters, which I thought was a bit annoying, because she was quite a looker and I found it was like a relative implying that I was the less attractive 'sister'," say Karina.

Linda had a lot going on for her, but despite that, Karina never really found herself jealous of her best friend. In fact, she was very proud of her and was even more proud that she chose to be her friend.

When Karina was 16, she entered a boarding school where she met her long, lost primary school friend, Johan Khairuddin. They soon developed a strong friendship that got everyone asking whether they were an exclusive couple.

"We just pooh-poohed the talk," says Karina.

After completing her secondary school, Karina had this crazy idea of bringing together her two favourite people in the world.

"I introduced them and sure enough, they did hit it off immediately. Pretty soon, they got close...so close to the point they'd sometimes go out without me. Thus began the disgruntlement on my part," says Karina.

But she didn't make a big fuss about it yet. Sometimes, she would get angry at Johan because for the first time, Karina felt that things weren't fair.

"I felt that Linda got everything, including MY best guy friend," she says.

Three years after their three-way friendship, Karina found out that her two best friends had feelings for each other. She felt that if the relationship they had was going to evolve into something that would result her being the third wheel, then it was a relationship she'd rather not be a part of.

"And with that simple decision, I pretty much shunned two of my best friends of more than half a decade," says Karina.

The estrangement lasted for a year, and Karina cried onto the shoulders of newfound friends. But no matter how many new friends she made, they were never the same as Linda and Johan.

"I apologised to Linda, and with her, forgiveness came sooner but it took a longer time to win Johan back," she says.

A few days before her 21st birthday, Karina noticed that Johan's online chat button was green (an indication to show that he was online).

She clicked on his name and said, "Your chat button is green" and he replied, "So it is."

And from that, they slowly tried to be friends again. It didn't take very long and wasn't very hard, and now they are all as close as ever - but with a hint of maturity and meaning to the relationship, less drama and more common sense.

But they never speak about that period, preferring to let bygones be bygones.

*All names have been changed to avoid more conflict

This article was first published in All the Rage, an online publication of The Star, on June 23, 2008.