Weddings are a great sport. You dive headfirst into a crowd of familiar faces who suddenly feel distant for reasons nobody will ever fully explain. You meet cousins you once shared secrets with. You laugh with people you have not spoken to in years. There are moments when something inside you feels repulsive and awkward. And yet, when the whole fiasco ends, a strange ache settles in your chest and you wonder where all the time disappeared.

I caught myself standing alone in the middle of the wedding crowd, quietly imagining that I am Shah Rukh Khan at NASA. The song “Ye jo des hai tera, Swades hai tera” playing somewhere in the background of my mind. Nostalgia was dripping from every corner like old photographs falling out of forgotten drawers.

Is this what we call Maya and Moh?

The strange attachment to people who have changed and to memories that refuse to change.

You return home. You smell coffee again. You stare at your own walls. But your mind is still stuck remembering the oily wedding food you have been eating every day. The way bitter karela arrived like an uninvited VIP guest inside mix vegetable sabji. The body reacts first. The heart reacts later. The stomach is still traumatised.

It is going to take days before I feel city normal again. Before routine returns. Before silence replaces band baaja. Before my pulse stops vibrating to the rhythm of dhol.

Something happens inside you at weddings. Something neither science nor spirituality can completely explain. You travel across cities and emotions. You hug people you thought no longer mattered. You say goodbye to people you wish you had spoken to more. You stare at your own reflection in hotel mirrors and realise you have grown older and softer and more sentimental than you admit.

Relationships stretch and bend at weddings. Nostalgia arrives quietly. It sits beside you like an old friend and reminds you of everything you thought you had moved on from.

Maybe that is what weddings are meant to do.

Break us open.

And send us back home carrying a small piece of who we used to be.

Later, I’m too emotional right now.