G3

One of my closest friends got married today. I missed her wedding because it was in her ancestral village. Ironically, I have lost touch with most of my old friends and G3 (that’s what this one is called!) is one of the remaining few… there is no definite point when our friendship began, and I do not even recollect the first time we met. She was in my class since the first sem of college, but I knew her only briefly then. We really started to become friends after we started the second sem. We happened to be in the same practicals batch throughout our years of engineering, and I was constantly asking for her assignments and experiments. She used to constantly complain that I was too slow in completing my work and I always told her she was too serious about it. Imagine this, she was one of those who stayed farthest from college, and her journals and assignments were always handed in before me (and I happened to be one of the closest to college!!!)

Whenever she got Idli’s for lunch, the whole lot of us would polish it off in seconds, and then give her part of our lunch… we were forever complaining that you get too few idlis and far too infrequenly! Her lemon rice, coconut rice and tamarind rice were to die for and in turn, she always demanded a few sips of the chaas that was a perpetual part of my lunch… I vividly remember those endless hours spent writing in college…. No, we weren’t writing blogs or stories, we were writing assignments (that happens to be the only thing we did in college… trust me, this is one hundred percent true!) Hours and hours of boring work, made tolerable by her singing… she is a trained classical dancer and singer. Oh, I remember now, she’d always said during college that once she is thru, she will have her Arangetram (the debut performance of a fully trained Bharatnatyam dancer) and we would all have to attend it! But as we moved in the corporate world and got busier, I guess she had no time to think about here arangetram and the invitation for that never came… what came instead was her wedding invitation! And a love marriage at that!!!! Now, there is nothing amazing about a love marriage, but about G3. The timid, confident yet not outspoken girl who was in my college was the ‘mamma-pappa’s daughter’. We always thought she would be one of the first in our group to get married, and that too to a boy her parents would pick out for her. Well, she amazed us all…. Actually, I think she amazed herself too!!!

There was a time when we fought. It wasn’t a big thing; I don’t even remember what the issue was. There were no heated arguments or name-calling. We just stopped talking to each other. After about 3 weeks or so, the whole class knew we weren’t on talking terms and a lot of them gave us advice on why best friends shouldn’t fight. Hell, best friends should fight at least once in their life-time. That’s when they truly realize each other’s worth. Same thing happened to us. We had started missing each other terribly (though we never admitted it even afterwards, forget admitting it then!) Then one fine morning before class began, we just looked and each and burst out laughing. Neither remembered why we had stopped talking in the first place and by the time the morning classes began, it was like the last 3 weeks hadn’t even happened!

We did our project together and broke our heads over a lot of things in the final year… Then, we ended up in the same company and were in the same office for about 2 years. We met on and off at that time, both of us getting busier and busier. And then one fine day she announced that she was resigning. She left for UK on an assignment. We kept in touch thru mails at that time. One day I was out for dinner with my family, when my phone rings and I see an international number flashing on the display. Curious, I answer the call and its an absolutely ecstatic G3 at the other end. “My marriage is fixed!!!” she tells me and we chatted for a while. From then one, we chatted often, more so when her wedding was close. I haven’t seen one item of it, but I know everything that went into her trousseau!!! Today, I was a bit sad that I couldn’t make it to her wedding… but all my wishes with her. I pray that G and D have a wonderful life together. A life full of happiness and blessings… Congratulations dear and all the best as you begin this new phase of your life…