Abirami&Prateek

We packed up the lives we knew and left home dreaming of larger ones,
not quite knowing what those dreams had in store for us.
One January morning in New York, a flight landed early and another was running late.
Amidst the longest layover of our lives began our greatest adventure.

Looking back, those days come back in flashes, like scenes from a movie,
where the characters become fast friends,
wandering unfamiliar streets, each one somehow a walk to remember,
while conversations go on and on as the earth keeps turning.
They share their hopes, burdens, and everything in between.
Who knew one person could make you feel light as a feather
and still be the anchor that keeps you from floating away?

The second act of this movie is where the plot thickens.
Life came at us quickly, dressed in graduation gowns and shiny new careers.
Our futures were taking shape in front of us, and for a while, that was all we could see.
Meanwhile, the airport where we first met was turning into the scene of our hardest goodbyes.

Distance, devastating as it was, came bearing gifts of its own.
It made us choose, again and again, something that had always come so easily.
We started measuring time by the next flight, the next holiday, the next place we could find each other.
We climbed mountains together while learning to scale the distance,
and somehow, every mile between us only pulled us closer.

The families came together as our Tamil and Punjabi roots intertwined.
Where language fell short, love seemed to translate.
By then, we already knew a thing or two about bridging the space between two states.

One August afternoon in Hawaii, another chance encounter led us to a secret garden.
Someone finally popped the question,
and we stopped being characters in the movie.
We picked up the pen ourselves
and wrote our way into forever.