monsoon weddings

An old school friend of mine is mad at me because I missed ‘all his wedding parties’. For non Bengali readers (if any), my friend got married only once. Here weddings are a big deal and usually involve three or four extravagant ceremonies. I was invited in three in this case and I managed to miss them all without good enough excuses. Now this friend of mine and I go back a long way so cant blame him for being disappointed. The fact is, I dread this sort of gatherings, especially because there will be a lot of old school friends. Odd eh? But that’s the way I feel.

Its not that I didn’t have many friends at school, in fact it was quite the opposite. Do I have school spirit? Just line up a gang from any rival school from my time and let them take a shot and then find out what happens! What about memories? Hell I got plenty to get nostalgic about; fleeing from the school James Bond style, stealing books from book fairs, getting brutally beaten up by the teachers - got ‘em all! Then I went off to a college where boys from our school have historically been the majority. So why the recent apathy to go to school gatherings?

Well…I don’t know…I guess something changed. For starters folks just don’t seem to be as open anymore, (myself included). Theres a lot more money talk and showing off going on. Then everybody is dressed up all nice and acting all strange. Of course I got a bunch of people in there who I’ve been tight with all along and not like it’s an unpopular bunch either. Still, even the folks I’m tight with, I have somehow drifted apart. The jokes aren’t what they used to be, mine are either too loud or too subtle for most part. I cant really share things about my line of work or other interests with anybody (none of them knows that I write crap). And now a days it seems I forget everything (forgot if my good fiend’s one year old is a boy or a girl) and am too scared to make a fatal mistake. Sometimes friends are bringing in their wives and I, lacking all social graces, don’t have a clue as to how I should behave around them. I mean, if she was a girl friend I guess I could just turn down the volume a bit and try to be funny. But since everyone is acting all grown up and respectable, I am just not sure if that’d be enough.

So for all that and for the fact that I’d have to go home, shave and dress up before going to each of these, I don’t feel like going at weddings. But it looks like there are going to be plenty of these now since people are turning 27 and are in a hurry to get hitched. Somebody tell me what to do. :(

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