A Day in Baroda

Me 'n SiK finally made it for Ta's marriage. A trip which had started off as a plan for 4 days, including sight seeing around Gujarat, finally whittled down to a single day's rush to catch the marriage and reception and rush back to attend work on Monday. A slew of factors, including my ten day break and SiK's engagement contributed to us only being able to spend a day for this. But we had promised to ourselves we would attend her marriage whatever happens, and we did, finally.
I have to say... Despite my reservations about Modi's Gujarat, i was impressed with what i saw. Baroda (or Vadodara) was a clean, developed and quite modern city. I wish more Indian cities took off after the model i saw there. Each part of the city seemed to have been carefully planned and laid out and the buildings were all neat and modern. Me 'n SiK definitely wished we could have had a couple of days more there.
As for the bride herself, Ta was probably the most excited and bubbly bride i have seen till now. She had an easy vibrancy and positivity which rubbed off on us pretty easily. It has only been a few months since we came in touch with her, but it already seems like we've known her for long. The days in Infy came back to me when we three did a lot of things together. My favourite of the lot: When we formed the team of three for the PE Sports Day Table Tennis Tournament. Despite the fact that all three of us hadn't played in quite a long while, we reached the second round in all sections (the double, and the singles for each of us).
SiK is also getting hitched by the end of the year. Here's to the good memories. And to the everlasting buddies, without whom life would have been such a drag.