Desi marriage with twist

This happened sometime back, when I was on my way to bihar to attend sujeets marriage. I had taken coromandel express from chennai to calcutta. I hoped some good crowd gets into our compartment. You know what i meant by good crowd. The train started to move. My luck had not changed this time also. We got to know each other with in 30 minutes. That's when I felt its not that a bad a company to make your 36 hours of travel. Among them was one lady who cracked me up. Her name must be sarita... not sure.. You know about my forgetfulness don't you. She was from bangalore and had taken the same train from bangalore to reach chennai as we had done. She was so confident and so fluent in whatever she spoke. you ask her anything she would come up with a reply immediately. She dint take much time to think. I wondered 'Man she is so fast.. She things fast.. talks fast.. wish someday I could do that'. Gautam asked where she worked. She said she works in the sales department of citibank. 'ahhh...now I know the secret of her talent no wonder she is from sales'. After that I dint here whatever she was speaking to others .. must be I was day dreaming. I only could here they were talking something about marriage. I woke up from my dream and asked her ... 'you are also attending any marriage' she said 'Yes I am going to attend my own marriage'. Everybody laughed. I had done it again. God help my absent mindness. She was a catholic and was getting married to a bengali hindu. That's the reason she was going to calcutta where her marriage will be held in a typical bengali tradition. she was all excited about that. The guys parents are settled in a place close to delhi so she was supposed to fly to delhi where a reception would be held after 3 days. Immediately she would come back to bangalore and wed to the same guy in a church, like the way catholics do. And that was not it she had planned to go for honeymoon somewhere near himalayas. Guess what was the plan for her honey moon. they had planned trekking and rock climbing. After that finally the happily wed couple would crash in mumbai, that's were the guy works. All this would happen within 20 days. I took sometime time to digest what she had just told. Her marriage would definitely be unique.She must have freaked out while shopping, shopping for a single marriage is hell, thing of doing it twice. She would travel almost the whole india for her marriage. Atleast she would cover all the metro cities. And what about the kind of honeymoon inbetween the hectic schedule. Then I wondered if this would be a good script for a hindi masala movie. That's a marriage which I did not attended but will remember for long time.

Lost Friends

Friends in college meant more to me than anybody else in life. My world was confined to college and my friends there. Home was just a place I slept. Even at home my mind was always thinking of the other world that was fun and exciting. Our junta was the best in class. We were the cool group, 3 out of 5 toppers were from our group. The guys to get caught for mis behavior in class should always has to be one among us. We left the campus last after everybody had gone home. The time spent sitting on bikes in the parking lot being the best. We discussed everything possible from how bad the lectures were, how the campus can be made better, problems each faced at home, how the guys staying away miss their homes to guessing the chest size of the girl passing, arguing about whose rare is the best around, rating the best 10 girls in college and flirting with them. For all these we had only one place in the whole campus. The parking lot. Those were the days.....
Then the inevitable had to happen. It was time to leave college and look out for jobs. Few went to US for higher studies, I went out of town but most of them got job in bangalore. I shifted back to bangalore within one and half year. I was all excited by the fact that I can be with my old buddies again. Ohhhh hold on !!!!! is this my junta, what's happened to everybody. It wasn't the same anymore... getting through a friend had become difficult. Messages like 'I am in a meeting will call you back','Little busy will call you after I get free' got frequent. The junta had forgotten how to enjoy or rather was it reserved for weekends? I starting accepting things, though not fully. Why cant we be the same as in college. We can still meet up after office hours, may not be all but atleast few. Well there were on answers for my questions.
Out of 7 days in a week I lived for only 2 days, the weekends. I made plans every weekend to meet up mostly at coffee days, barista's, movies and sometimes bowling. I tried to search for my old friends in them. I could sometimes but mostly everybody had changed. Their thinking had changed. They had become more serious in life. No more checking out girls. I was considered not matured. Tell me does grown up mean 'be serious' talk only about the serious things in life like your carrier, where u gonna settle down, when you gonna get married and stuff. These discussions were fine but not always, the fun part was missing. I found myself in a bunch of serious and matured guys. Who I think have found out what they want from life and are going about getting it silently.
I am still here thinking where and when I lost my friends. I am in the process of accepting the change. I don't trouble them anymore, No calls on weekdays if I do first line would be 'are you free to talk'.