It’s no secret that I am a huge fan of Mindy Kaling and I adore her book, Why Not Me. I’ve reread it a bit and one chapter I really love is the one where she speaks about her relationship with B.J Novak, her sort of on-off-again boyfriend. I think her words on their bond is really charming in a kooky way and like all love, it is really tailored to their style and personality. I advise everyone to get a copy of her book, it’s in most bookshops and available online.

Here’s Mindy now…

“I will freely admit: my relationship with B.J is weird as hell. He is not exactly my best friend. The best way I would describe him is that he is my ex-husband, and we have a son who is away at boarding school, so our fighting can never get that bad, because it would upset our child. I don’t think Facebook would accept that as a new status. They would just categorise it as, “It’s complicated.”

The occasional way we’ve described our relationship is “soup snakes.” This term comes from a season 7 episode of The Office where Michael Scott is reunited with his ex-girlfriend Holly and is pretending he doesn’t have feelings for her anymore. Later, he privately confesses to comaera:

MICHAEL

I wrote down a list of bullet points why Holly and I should be together, and I’m going to find the perfect moment today and I am going to tell her.

(Michael pulls out a ratty little piece of paper with writing scribbled all over it. He reads from it.)

Number one: Holly, you and I are … soup snakes. The … and the reason is … because …in terms of the soup, we like to … that doesn’t make any sense. (realizing he is misreading his own handwriting) We’re soul mates! Holly and I are soul mates.

I think I love the scene because it reflects how love works. “Soul mates” is what you aim for, but soup snakes is what you get sometimes…

….My mother passed away in 2011. She was a warm and sociable person, but she did not suffer fools. She did not suffer lazy people, pretentious people, liars, the sloppy or the inarticulate. Basically she suffered very few people, and it was hard to earn her respect. But she always really respected B.J. Maybe it was something about his confidence, but I think it had more to do with the fact that he, like her, is a very serious person who loves nothing more than a smart joke. They had a fondness and mutual respect for each other, even through the tumultuousness of our twenties.

She said of him, “B.J is your equal” which is saying a lot, because my mother thought I was literally the best person she had ever met.

Later, when she got sick, B.J came to Boston to visit her in the hospital and did something I will always be profoundly grateful for. He did for her what he had done for me when I was a nervous, homesick, heartbroken New York transplant hired on my first writing job on season 1 of The Office.

He made her laugh.

And that is why B.J and I are soul mates, and the reason is … because in terms of the soul, we like to … That doesn’t make any sense. We’re soup snakes. B.J and I are soup snakes.”

-Mindy Kaling, Why Not Me