At a friend's marriage

Friendship is a great thing to have. Everybody thinks “en friend-a pola yaaru machan”. After sitting next to the same person for about two years, you get to know about each other more than you would wish to disclose. You get to fight really bad, become the partners in crime and those few days when your neighbour is absent to school, you are bored like hell. At the end of the school life, you realise that you had been friends all along! Then on the farewell day, the promise of being in touch comes by. For the next few years, through the college life, the circle grows little bigger and you still hangout together. You join work and for a few months there is absolutely no contact.

Out of the blue, this person calls you and says he is getting married. You had been together in most of the tough times till now. How would one let his friend take this punishment of marriage, alone? So you are all geared up to attend the marriage. On the day of the reception you go early and be with him when he gets ready. Many new people come to the dressing room – friends from his work life and you are introduced to those complete strangers. The reception starts and he gives grateful looks at us for being there at this important juncture of his life! So there he is, on the stage with his wife, welcoming the guests and there you are in the midst of complete strangers. We discuss general topics first and those guys get lost discussing platforms like Java and windows. The only platform you are aware of is the railway platform, at the maximum, platform93/4 of King’s cross!

When your thoughts start drifting away, you see familiar faces – people who studied in other sections of the same class from the school. Then you remember “before the two years this fellow spent with me, he had spent 10 years in some other section”. There are greetings of “Hi Siddhart, how are you?” The real trouble starts only now. You do not know their names. The face is so familiar, but the name – not even worth a try! It would have been great if the conversation had started as “hey I’ve seen you in prince school but forgot ur name” rather than “Hi Siddhart,How are you?” You get involved in the conversation just to be abreast with the names of the people you are conversing with. Red shirt – so and so; Scene party – so and so; latest arrival – so and so; there is also an instance when you fix a person with a name and just when you are sure of your guess, a new arrival greets someone else with the name you had given to this person! Phew, that was close; When all these things are running in your mind someone exclaims “hey look, so and so is coming”. I look in the direction as everyone and notice someone with a familiar face and checked shirt coming. He greets everyone, notices me and says “Hi Siddhart”. This time I am prepared and I say “Hi so and so”. With a sullen face he says “I am not so and so, I am ‘this and this’ and the so and so you are talking about, could not find the address and I just brought him along!” there it goes and everyone breaks out laughing! Suddenly the attention turns all towards you and everyone wants to know if you got their name right. Now this is easy. You point at people - red shirt (saying this in your mind) so and so, Scene party so and so, Latest arrival so and so, checked shirt so and so. Having passed this test, you give a sigh of relief and before the sigh has left your lungs, a new person joins and the crowd says “hey nobody call out his name, let’s see if Siddhart gets him right”.

I quit!

If you attend a close friend’s marriage, make sure you are acquainted with at least a few of his other friends!