Cecily Wong on the Thrill of Nostalgia

In 2014, while traveling through the Indian state of Goa, my boyfriend Read and I received a chance invitation to a wedding. We had met the groom and his friends at our hotel, hit it off, and learned in quick succession that he was the prince of a small Goan town, that he was getting married at the end of the week, and that we were invited. Two days later, we found ourselves among the thousand guests gathered at a sprawling sixteenth-century palace compound. I remember this day with the familiarity of a favorite movie: the half-dozen archways in the courtyard, each with a German Sheppard poised below; the four-foot oil paintings of the royal family in gilded frames; the newlyweds on a raised platform festooned with marigolds, Read in a turban, me in a bindi, both of us quietly gobsmacked. 

A childhood friend of the groom took us under her wing. She was a popular radio DJ who knew practically everyone in attendance. She was the kind of person who could tell you who among the guests had married for money, who for love, and who would be too drunk by the evening’s end. At a certain point, she pointed out a two-year-old boy sitting with a grey-haired couple in their sixties and told me they had lost a son. Her voice