January 2020. Gokarna. One week. One job: hold the camera steady.
What that week actually turned into, I found out years later. A wedding invite. A standing offer to crash at someone's place in Spain.
The trip itself made no sense for us to be on.
Trip Naari. Girls-only, the name says it. Four men got in anyway.
Me and Pradeep, for the camera. Kamal, because he could sing. Lokesh, because his sister ran the place.
The rest: a dozen women, travelling solo, strangers to each other and to us. One of them was Priyanka. Another was Daniela. She'd flown in from Spain.
Nobody knew anybody. By day two, we were already trading the stories you don't open with. Just to kill the silence between beaches.
Last night of the trip. Kamal brought the guitar out after dinner.
We moved to the sand. Lit a fire. Stayed till three.
A dozen people, four days old to each other, saying things to strangers they hadn't said to the people back home.
Kisi ko kuch nahi pata tha, us raat. (Sach mein. Bilkul kuch nahi.)
That Kamal and Priyanka would get married, a few years later.
That Daniela, a woman I'd spoken to for maybe two evenings total, would still be telling me, years on, that I have a place to stay whenever I make it to Spain.
You can't go looking for either one.
Nobody plans to meet "the person I'll marry." Nobody plans to meet "the friend who'll put me up in another country." Not the way you plan a job search. Not the way you book a flight.
Everyone around that fire was there for some other reason. I was there to shoot video. Kamal, to sing. Priyanka and Daniela, on a holiday they picked for themselves.
Nobody went looking. Everybody just found.
I still have the footage. Somewhere. On a hard drive I haven't opened in years.
Think about the last person who became permanent in your life.
What were you actually doing, the day you met them?
I'd bet it wasn't "looking for a friend."