You know, love stories don’t always have happy, blissful
endings. Sometimes, they leave you in tears with a broken heart and shattered
hopes. You find yourself losing faith in love as a concept. In such a
situation, it’s immensely helpful to watch a close friend’s love story unfold,
day by day, and reach a successful conclusion. That’s pretty much how it was
for me.
His name is Abhishek. Hers is Nidhi. And as of today, they’re
married. Happily so, touch wood. Me? Well, I am still reeling from the
occasional pain of the broken heart. But this is their story. Not mine.
Five years ago, I bumped into Abhishek at rehearsal. A week
after meeting him I met his then-girlfriend-now-wife Nidhi. It’s said that
opposites attract and these two stood as the archetype of that concept. While
Abhishek is the quintessentially short fused mammoth, Nidhi has an air of
stability and calmness about her. He’s the reactor, she’s the pacifier. When I met
them, they had already been dating for 6 years. I often wondered why she was
seeing him. But as we all became close like a family, I could see why. Without each
other, they were incomplete. Every time they fought, I saw them itching to make
up. Not that it stopped them from fighting.
Trouble was; Abhishek’s family members were staunch
believers in astrological predictions, given their experiences in the past. And
that prediction said that their wedding would destroy Abhishek. The frustration
of disapproval trickled into their relationship, leading to frequent quarrels. Often,
he would call me, drive down inebriated and rant on about how he was miserable because
Nidhi didn’t understand his dilemma and difficulty. The rants lasted anywhere
between 15 minutes to an hour and a half. The next day, however, invariably, I was
sworn to silence.
That isn’t to say that Nidhi didn’t have her moments and
though I was witness to it far less than I was to Abhishek’s, on occasion, she would
bring up her frustrations with the relationship having reached a stalemate. She
would be irritable, demanding and obstinate. Once, they argued with such
ferocity that by the end of it, Abhishek’s phone lay shattered on the ground
and Nidhi could be heard crying on the other end from about 5 feet away. I thought
it was over. It wasn’t.
A year after this incident, and after a lot of encores, he managed
to convince his father and a wedding date was picked. Great!
But as luck would have it, the morning of the wedding, the
open air venue looked more like a reservoir, thanks to torrential rains the
night before. Given the urgency, patience was in short supply. While he was
scouting venues with us, Nidhi was busy handling the relatives. Finally, a
venue was booked at 4 PM, the decorations were done in 2 hours flat and the
wedding concluded at midnight, ushering in a happy climax.
On most days, that still gives me a glimmer of hope.
This
post was written for the 'The first real love story I watched unfold'
blogging contest by http://www.bonobology.com/
and http://writersmelon.com/
