More Thoughts On My Best Friends' Wedding

This is a follow up to My Best Friends' Wedding.

I've known for about six years that Sumit and Aditi were meant to be together. I've known for a few months now that they are getting married on the 23rd of this month. But it never sank in fully until I received the invitation yesterday and made my mom take me out today to buy something to wear for their wedding. This is the very first time in my life that I've actually bought myself a saree. I mean, I've worn sarees before, but they've all been borrowed for an evening (or a day, as they case may have been) from my mom. The salesman asked me if I wanted a really special saree, like what I would wear to a sibling's wedding. I told him that was pretty much as close as he could be to the truth.

I've known Aditi since she was twelve years old. Back then, I thought she was a bit of a weirdo. She probably was, actually. Because she admits it herself! The first couple of years that Aditi and I spent as classmates, we didn't interact too much, and I wasn't too keen on any significant amount of interaction either.

A couple of years later, after our class tenth board exams, we ended up as classmates again, and somehow, this time round, came to be pretty good friends. We worked together on the school magazine, accompanied each other on a school trip (when Adi went trekking all by herself and somehow managed to return barefoot!), and spent some good times together. We applied to NIFT for a diploma course in design together. It's a different matter that she got through and I didn't. I once accompanied her on a "shopping trip" where she went into a women's clothing store and made the salesman turn his entire store inside out, knowing fully well that she had only ten bucks in her pocket.

People say that friendship is like a delicate bone china cup. Once it cracks, you can superglue it back together, but the cracks will still show. I've had huge disagreements and differences with a number of people in my life. But my relationship with Aditi is the only one that has survived such an episode, without any cracks showing, and has infact emerged stronger.

I've known Sumit since he was fifteen. All three of us were classmates then. It's a different story that neither Aditi nor I were significantly close friends with Sumit back then. That happened only after we left school.

The three of us, along with the rest of the gang, have spent some really memorable times together. We've accompanied each other in sitting through some of the most disastrous movies ever made in Bollywood. We've eventually been shopping with each other with a three-digit sum of money or a credit card in our pockets. We've been there for each other, to share the joyous moments and to ease the pain of the sad ones. We've often been geographically far apart, but always close to each other's hearts.

I remember the time in Friends when Joey suddenly realizes that things will no longer be the same after Monica and Chandler get married. That's the kind of realization that hit me today. Things will certainly not be the same after these two get married and move to Melbourne. It's a bit of the same feeling that I had when Sumit first moved to Mysore, or Aditi first moved to Hyderabad.

But hey, we've always been good at keeping in touch across the vast distances, haven't we? There was this time when Sumit was in Bangalore and I was planning to visit him there, although we eventually decided that both of us would visit Shashank in Hyderabad instead. That was the only time in my life that I got on to a plane. To see my dearest friends. And then there was New Year's 2006-07, when I went to Jaipur to spend it with Aditi. So it's decided then. My next vacation destination will certainly be Melbourne.

Wish you two a lifetime full of joy, caring, sharing, giving and receiving (I know I sound like Joey. It's on purpose!), and happiness, with the little surprises that Sumit loves to spring on Aditi every so often (and also on the rest of us, once in a while), and the odd jokes that Aditi keeps cracking!

Love you guys so much!