Danny & Rusty
At some point during the last year, I made a “Fam” list on my phone. Gopal and Gopali were at the top of the list… above my parents. I don’t know how, but my mom must’ve seen the list I made. The next time I talked to her on the phone after making the list, she vaguely mentioned it and sounded a bit sad about it. It’s not that my parents and sister aren’t my main fam… it’s more like, I don’t know how to explain it, but it’s more like we had completely lost touch with each other. It started when I went to college and only got worse than over the years. I thought they had basically abandoned me. Gopal and Gopali, on the other hand, stuck by me. Even during my worst years, when I was so inward, quiet and morose that it seemed like I was just a zombie walking around, they tried their hardest to do right by me. They included me in everything — even family events — and tried to make me feel special whenever they could. I could tell they always had me in mind whenever and wherever life took them. Hell, they would practically plan things for them two around my schedule. Ankur is free? Let’s include him. Ankur is being a butthead and saying no to everything? Let’s either bring the party to him or just stay in with him. They would even make me the tiebreaker for any fights they had as a couple.
They… were the last two of my pillars to go before my mental breakdown happened. They were my pillars more than my girlfriend at the time was… which, I thought she was one of my best friends since the day I met her in 2007. I could sense something major was off with our energies when I arrived at our AirBnB for Coachella in April 2018. I had been getting that feeling for a while — Coachella confirmed it. And honestly? Gopali was probably fine. Something was off with me and Gopal, though, and that broke me. He is my brother more than Mohini is my sister. He is my other half more than some of my ex-girlfriends were my other half. I love him to death, and honestly I don’t know what was going through his mind those days but I don’t blame him for thinking whatever he did. Guys have a hard time communicating, and while I stopped being real with him first, I wish he’d just asked me what was up… what the problem was. Why he didn’t feel the love from my side. Maybe he thought I didn’t care for him that much, but if there’s one person in the world who I love, it’s him. Okay, maybe my mom comes first, but don’t think it’s not close. Those two, my mom and him? They are the winds beneath my wings. They showed me what it means to love someone truly and dearly. During a time when I hated everything and everyone except cute girls who would give me attention… during a time when I tried my hardest to stay away from Indians and from guys too… during a time I considered myself a lone wolf, forgotten and abandoned by my family… Gopal became my family. To give you an idea of how absurd the likelihood of that was… from the outside, one might think our friendship was naturally awesome and just grew and grew and grew. To me? I tried my best to push him away. And it wasn’t a him thing… I had mental blockers against even the idea of a “friend”, let alone “best friend”, let alone someone daring to utter the words he once did to me, and me accepting them as truth: “I don’t think of you as a friend. I think of you as family.”
Gopal and I may have been two peas in a pod at one point, but as the years went on, we grew into ourselves. We were more different from each other than I had realized. It wasn’t a bad realization, though. If anything, we grew to accept the differences and changes in each other. I think we realized who we are as individuals even more so as a result of it too.
I wish I could go back to the day Danny met Rusty… I would just love to be a fly on the wall and see our friendship develop. But also, as it turns out, I know the backstory to Ocean’s Eleven even better than the script writer does.
