Their relationship kicked off during the 2015 Chennai floods

The December 2015 floods didn’t just unite the city. It also resulted in some unexpected meetings

I met Vinodhnie Suresh for the first time at Lady Andal school, when the entire city was flooded. I was there to help in some relief work, and so was she.

This was at a time when I had decided that I wasn’t going to be open to relationships and marriage. We just said hello — she had a requirement for some material — and exchanged numbers. That was about it.

A few days later, I’d messaged her regarding the material she’d requested. It so happened that on the same day, their family was zeroing in on a name for her sister’s baby boy. They had three options, and one of them was Aadhav. Just when they were in the process of finalising, my message reached her... and she read it out to her sister, saying that it was a big coincidence that someone by the same name had messaged her then. The baby was finally named Aadhav!

We met a couple of times after that, and I realised that she was unlike any girl I’d ever met till then. She was gentle and genuinely caring, and we realised, as weeks flew by, that we had a lot of common interests.

Both of us had a soft corner for each other, to the extent that even friends were teasing us. But we never explicitly professed our love for each other.

Around the same time her parents wanted her to get married. She asked me what she should do, and I quietly asked her to tell her parents about me.

But it wasn’t an easy ride after that. We had to convince both our parents, who didn’t initially agree. They come from a business background and I was interested in movies, and it was quite a challenge to get the match done. I still recall how I convinced my mother; I asked Vinodhnie to come to my house, made her sit in a different room and suddenly sprang a surprise on my mom saying that this is the girl I wanted to marry. She was taken aback, but had to welcome her as a guest. Slowly, she warmed up to her, and now I’m extremely happy to see them plan outings together.

The most interesting thing was our parents finally agreed to us in December 2016. We had met exactly a year ago, during the December 2015 floods. We subsequently got married in December 2017. That will, surely, be our most special month.

(As told to Srinivasa Ramanujam)