Its been raining marriages around me over the last 7 months. Lolz, to continue to the beating started by Pooja and Padmav --> My Bro and Manni --> Doggy and Sana --> Price and Sharon --> Sherry and Flaunty --> My cuz and his girl --> Choms and R... The journey has been fascinating and absolutely awesome.. I'd previously shared a piece with my emotions painted when my Bro sold his stake to my manni; and now, to follow it up- I just want to paint an another parchment of emotions of how it feels to have you "chaddi-dost" and "best-pal" get knotted..:P..

Ever since I’ve known Chomy(Yup!, thats 18 looooooooong years now! :P), she'd always wanted to find the man of her dreams and get mar­ried. I’ve rarely met some­one with that objec­tive so clear in their mind! I remem­ber She and me watch­ing the movie "Life in a Metro" together and me telling her how much Konkona’s char­ac­ter reminded me of her.

Over the years and our 'sin­gle­hood', Chomy and I have had many dis­cus­sions on find­ing "the right one". One ques­tion she often had was how she would know for sure when he came along! How does one know, really? Much air­time has been wasted (or not) in dis­cussing the lack of good 'ones' (really, where are these lads and lasses?!) and the fact that our good years were slowly fad­ing away.

I mostly enjoyed play­ing an elder brotherly role and (in my infi­nite wis­dom!) usu­ally tried to impart, what I hope, was good advice. You will know, when you meet him, I said. Things will fall into place. When the stars align every­thing will work out! And so on and so forth. Through our heart­breaks and set­backs, I often told her that things that are des­tined to hap­pen, will hap­pen and surely they would hap­pen to her too. Very soon. "You can’t rush things", I said, they will hap­pen when the time is right. I even remember Shylaja Aunty(Chomy's Mom) took us to the some tem­ple and had gotten our futures read to assure both of us that good things were in store.:P

Over the years, despite all my out­ward reas­sur­ances, I must admit that my own belief in love and romance, the insti­tu­tion of mar­riage, in hap­pily wed­ded has received quite a knock­ing. Much as I would like to believe I have also seen so many signs to the con­trary, result­ing in cyn­i­cism creep­ing in and the rose coloured spec­ta­cles I wore when I was younger get­ting clouded. From being let down, from expec­ta­tions not being met (and what is life with­out some expec­ta­tion?) and from a lot of dis­con­nect. Do I expect too much or are peo­ple just not inter­ested? :-p

I would, of course, like to believe in love and romance, in find­ing "the one", but it’s dif­fi­cult to muster that blind faith any­more. When I was eigh­teen and starry eyed, yes. But older and wiser, as they say, and things don’t quite seem the same.

So despite it all, it gives me small plea­sure that even­tu­ally "Chomy-Dumbo" did meet the man of her dreams and now is about to tie the knot. While I watched — some­times in admi­ra­tion and some­times in fas­ci­na­tion at how fast things can move in some­one else’s life (at least com­pared to mine!), I was thrilled to see Soumya's and R's rela­tion­ship develop, mature and go straight to the altar!

I for one, am so glad that she is finally hitched. At least that way we will now be spared of her exis­ten­tial ques­tions (and mul­ti­ple smses) like, "err..bw does it happen in fairy tales..?", "Where's my man?!" and "when will I ever meet him?" and "ho!-c'mon- tell me Bags!"... These kind of ques­tions, as you can imag­ine, are quite hard to answer ;-p

Through these years, Chomy never gave up hope though. She went about her mis­sion with admirable enthu­si­asm despite the many road­blocks! I think one thing I admire her for is her sin­gle minded focus about what she wanted. And maybe that worked in the end. She did find the man and she did make every­one includ­ing her­self happy.

Mean­while, I still won­der some­times about life and love and its related com­pli­ca­tions. Infact, one thing that Padma Aunty(Poo's mom) com­plains con­stantly about the "sin­gle sta­tus" of both her daugh­ters, I jok­ingly ask her "why change what is work­ing fine?" I try and con­vince her that at least we’re happy. But I real­ize that her goal is not our hap­pi­ness, but of chang­ing our status.

I still remain unsure about mar­riage and wed­ded bliss. (Or it might be for the sim­ple rea­son that no one’s actu­ally asked :-). Have I been on my own for too long now and got­ten too used to it? What I do miss though is some­one being an intrin­sic part of my life and shar­ing and doing things together. And that is a part­ner­ship that is so much harder to achieve.

But a friend’s wed­ding always makes me happy. It’s a time for cel­e­bra­tions, for love, laugh­ter and friends to get together. And to rein­force some of those faded beliefs.

For Choms & Mr R, wish­ing both of them loads and loads of hap­pi­ness and good times together.

Chomy babe — the sin­gles club will miss you! *Hugs!* :-)

Mr. R : I’ll be there when you need a shoul­der to cry on dude:-p