✦THE FINAL CHAPTER • 19 JULY

Dear Sarika,

It still makes me laugh that one of the most important friendships in my life began on 12 December with me typing “Unalome,” then “Unalo,” then “Alo,” then “Halo,” before finally locating the extremely difficult word “Hello.” Somehow, that ridiculous beginning was perfect for us.

In less than a year you already felt like someone I had known for eons. You once described our friendship as the childhood friend you sit beside at school, share tiffin with, and then run outside to play with again in the evening. I have carried that description with me because it is exactly what you became: familiar, uncomplicated, and somehow present even from very far away.

“Do you have eight minutes?” stopped being a request for time. It became a promise. It meant: pause whatever is happening; one of us needs the other. You have steadied more bad days than you probably realise, celebrated the good ones without making them smaller, and reminded me—again and again—that friendship can be both deeply gentle and spectacularly unserious.

Some of my happiest memories exist because of you. Walking to Walmart as though it were a tourist attraction. Reading strangers’ tombstones because apparently normal sightseeing was not enough. Jumping into Albany snow. Driving past those endless green fields on the way to you. Staying in buildings older than any plan we had. Meeting Eva and Eileen. Hearing “you should be here” and, for a little while, actually being there. You did not simply show me places; you made those places feel like they had been waiting for me.

I have always admired the particular way you are strong. Not the kind that asks to be applauded—the kind that quietly rebuilds, follows through, takes care of people, and still arrives with that completely unfiltered joy of yours. You once said motivation dies and discipline goes a long way. I have watched you live that sentence. I have also watched your empathy make people feel seen, often before they knew how to ask.

Then came the wedding—the moment you once said I had to attend. Seeing you and Varad surrounded by colour, ritual, family, friends, noise, laughter, and so much love felt like watching a new home take shape around two people I care about. I hope you always remember how many faces in those photographs are lit differently simply because you are in the frame.

Thank you for sticking by me through the months when I was difficult to reach, difficult to reassure, or just being my usual dumb self with my dumb jokes. Thank you for the pride, the honesty, the teasing, the calls, and every small act that said, without ceremony, “You’ve got a friend in me.” I need you on the bad days—but even more, I want you present for every good day still waiting for us.

You already know that I am battling depression, and you have seen what that can do to my days: sometimes the future feels impossibly far away; sometimes even the present is difficult to hold. What I want to tell you plainly is how much your quiet support has meant to me through it. Not because I expect you to fix this or carry any part of it—you never have to—but because you have never needed a grand gesture to remind me that I am not entirely alone. You simply stay kind. You keep showing up. And somehow, that lets a little hope back in.

Since my first visit to New York, I have been carrying around a wonderfully ridiculous collection of card games—the whole Cards Against Humanity collection, still sealed in its original plastic, along with enough other games to stock several deeply questionable evenings. I told myself I was saving them, but the sadder truth was that I could not imagine having friends to open them with. Certainly not in Ambala. Certainly not while I was struggling as an actor and trying to believe there might be a different life ahead of me. Games like these are invitations, and for a long time I did not believe I had anyone to invite.

Whenever I saw your games arranged in the little table beneath your television, I felt quietly, almost absurdly happy for you. They looked like a small, proud monument to a life full of lovely people—friends who came over, sat around, laughed too loudly, and made opening a box feel ordinary. Recently, my own collection finally reached my new place, and I put it in the little table beneath my television, just as you used to. I took these two photographs—first the whole ridiculous collection spread across the floor, then the boxes tucked into their new home—because the moment felt much bigger than it looked.

A collection of card and party games, including Cards Against Humanity boxes, UNO, and The Couples Game, arranged together on a tiled floor. — **Still wrapped. No longer without hope.**The collection I carried forward from New York now sits beneath my television, the way yours once did.

Close-up of unopened Cards Against Humanity expansion boxes arranged inside the small table beneath the television. — **Still wrapped. No longer without hope.**The collection I carried forward from New York now sits beneath my television, the way yours once did.

They are still wrapped. I still do not have that room full of people—not yet. But the boxes no longer feel like evidence of something missing. They feel like a promise I might one day keep. I am getting there slowly. You are not responsible for that journey, but friends like you make it feel possible. Your quiet friendship has helped me believe that one day I will open those boxes, call people I love to the table, and recognise that I have finally arrived inside a life I once could not imagine.

Happy birthday, meri pyari chudail dost. I hope this year returns your care to you in ridiculous abundance. I hope it brings you and Varad peace, adventure, laughter that ruins photographs, a home full of people who show up, and many more gloriously questionable itineraries. Wherever life moves us, I hope eight minutes always remains enough to find our way back.

With more gratitude than eight minutes could ever hold,
Saran

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