Ally was my room-mate from my post-grad years.I stayed with her for two full years in a place which was so far away from my roots and yet so close to my heart in the border between Kerala and Tamil Nadu.
In simple words,she was a great girl-beautiful inside-out.
She belonged to an extremely conservative jacobite family-her father was a christian jacobite priest.She had studied in a malyali medium school all her life-had never ventured out of Kerala till she got into madrass medical college for her graduation.Five years of medical school was where she started learning english.By the time we met ,she used to rattle off in english like she was born speaking it.She was a prayer warrier !
We parted ways after my post-grad ,I came to the north and she went back to Kerala mostly to be with her mother who had widowed quite some years back.There were occasional emails .
Most of my roomies were going through the rounds of arranged marriage hip-hop.Every other week-end they would come back with some stories about a potential groom.
Four years into our seperate lives and one fine day I received her wedding invitation.I could't attend but a common friend spoke in superlatives about the groom.I thought Ally would settle but it was a beginning of a nightmare for her which ended in two years in a divorce.She had no choice whatsoever but to call it quits.Her trauma was something we as her friends failed to understand.My constant question was, why her lord?She was such a beautiful person,a prayer warrior to boot....The following year was a year when she went through the dark night...so many states away from her ,sometimes I used to feel the tug to pray for her at the middle of the night.I used to be lost for words while speaking to her because words start sounding hollow after a point.
Yesterday I received a simple card from her which read my second wedding invitation .She is getting married on the 9th of the coming month.It also happens to be her birthday.
I knelt down on my knees and thanked the lord for the wonderful present she had given all of us who really knew Ally.
In simple words,she was a great girl-beautiful inside-out.
She belonged to an extremely conservative jacobite family-her father was a christian jacobite priest.She had studied in a malyali medium school all her life-had never ventured out of Kerala till she got into madrass medical college for her graduation.Five years of medical school was where she started learning english.By the time we met ,she used to rattle off in english like she was born speaking it.She was a prayer warrier !
We parted ways after my post-grad ,I came to the north and she went back to Kerala mostly to be with her mother who had widowed quite some years back.There were occasional emails .
Most of my roomies were going through the rounds of arranged marriage hip-hop.Every other week-end they would come back with some stories about a potential groom.
Four years into our seperate lives and one fine day I received her wedding invitation.I could't attend but a common friend spoke in superlatives about the groom.I thought Ally would settle but it was a beginning of a nightmare for her which ended in two years in a divorce.She had no choice whatsoever but to call it quits.Her trauma was something we as her friends failed to understand.My constant question was, why her lord?She was such a beautiful person,a prayer warrior to boot....The following year was a year when she went through the dark night...so many states away from her ,sometimes I used to feel the tug to pray for her at the middle of the night.I used to be lost for words while speaking to her because words start sounding hollow after a point.
Yesterday I received a simple card from her which read my second wedding invitation .She is getting married on the 9th of the coming month.It also happens to be her birthday.
I knelt down on my knees and thanked the lord for the wonderful present she had given all of us who really knew Ally.
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