A very close friend of mine, Burjor, got married last Tuesday. His wife, Shiraz, is a gem of a person, someone who will take great care of him for the rest of his life and will keep him very happy.

Burjor and I first met in college in 1982. He was a genius; extremely intelligent and very articulate. In those days of artificial angst, we used to spend hours and hours in the college canteen smoking and drinking "chai", discussing the screwed-up world. In those days, he had a couple of intense affairs, but nothing really worked out.

Sometime during our internship he met with an accident and had a bad head injury. He was unconscious for about 21 days; it was a miracle that he survived. When he was finally discharged, we realized that he had developed post-traumatic behavioral changes, which included memory lapses and a marked loss of confidence. He took over his father's practice and slowly but surely, painstakingly, rebuilt himself. Somewhere down the line he met Shiraz, who was also going through a bad patch in her life; eventually they decided to get married and it was this wedding that I attended in its entirety on Tuesday at the lovely Colaba agiary.

At the time of his head injury, he had been going around with Savitri, a Maharashtrian girl; intelligent, but confused, with a massive chip-on-her-shoulders related to the world in general. Burjor and Savitri had a serious relationship going at the time, which was at least eight months old, until the time of the accident. She hung around while Burjor was in the hospital, but sometime after that she left him.

I was furious. At the time when he could have done with her support, she backed off. From a cool logical viewpoint, you could try and understand her decision; Burjor was no longer the same person she had fallen in love with and his future was unsure. Yet, the fact was that she had vamoosed at the time when he needed her most; she eventually married another like-minded individual and is now the mother of two kids.

Burjor forgave Savitri a long time ago. I could not. I might have even forgotten about her over a period of time, but for the fact that she is a good friend of my wife's and we land up meeting each other at least once a year.

But I guess, whatever happens, happens for the best. If Savitri had not left Burjor, he would never have met Shiraz. And Shiraz is far better for Burjor than Savitri would ever have been.

And automatically, while watching Burjor and Shiraz happily kissing each other, my anger towards Savitri melted away and one more ghost from my college days was exorcised. Not that too many are left now anyway!