I was coming back to UCLA for the first time in a while; she’d been there since I’d left. I didn't quite know why, but when I saw her, I made it my personal goal to learn her name before we’d even met. We met at the institute at UCLA on a Monday night, the day my life’s wildest journey began. The first words she ever heard me say were, “Hi Shalini!” and then I ran away because I was too nervous to have a real conversation. I hoped I’d made a lasting impression, if not a good one. I knew immediately that we’d be friends, even if she didn’t know it yet.

I think my heart figured out who Shalini would be to me a lot earlier than my head did—despite the suspicious feelings I had at our first meeting, I didn’t start to realize (full realization took a while) I was falling for her until a few months later. We’d had a conversation about Coldplay and concerts and cool music, and I asked for her number because I “needed a music buddy.” This day was the first day I noticed myself listening to music and thinking about Shalini. Despite all this, I hadn’t figured out how deep in this I really was. How? When I thought about Shalini, I think I knew that anything with her had the potential to last a lifetime—honestly, I was afraid of that. This song will always be a reminder of that, and the time we spent in each others orbits—circling close together, but always keeping things at a comfortable distance. Things were about to get uncomfortable.

We starting texting, a lot, but hardly ever with words. We just sent spotify links back and forth every day for maybe two months. Every song she sent made it harder to avoid what I really already knew—my music buddy had finally become my beautiful stranger, and I needed to get to know her better.

A week or two earlier, Shalini asked me to go to the temple and do baptisms with her—shout out to Grace Wilson for being the ultimate wingwoman and refusing to come with us—and at that point it was pretty clear this was turning into something more. However, when I asked Shalini if she had feelings for me, she said she didn’t know. I had a lot of follow-up questions, such as “well, do you want to find out” which were also met with an immutable “I don’t know.” This went on for about an hour in her car outside of my apartment, but a couple weeks later we would return to my apartment for our first date.

I bought the ring in November. We went somewhere her Dad loves, embarked on a chilly morning hike, found an inexplicable array of laterns and string lights on and around a rock pool, and took our first step to marriage not just for this life, but the one to come as well.

This is the day of the Hindu ceremony for our engagement. It was a privilege for me to experience something new, and so sacred. Family comes first, now and forever.

This life, and the eternity to come, is a journey of learning and loving. We choose each other and we choose to love each other. We've taken a lot of steps together, push each other to achieve our dreams and always will. I'm grateful to have a man like Tim by my side forever. We'll always keep learning to love each other. <3