Surat: For the Avaiya and Patel families of Surat, the mind still refuses to believe what the heart already knows. Even a year after the AI 171 tragedy, they cannot bring themselves to accept that Hardik Avaiya and Vibhuti Patel are gone.
The two had celebrated their engagement in London and were home on a short holiday to be with their families. Now, both households have framed large photographs of Hardik and Vibhuti, to remember them as the married couple they were always meant to become.
They were together until their last breath, and they should be seen that way, the families say. What the tragedy took from them, it has also, in its own way, given back.
With each passing day, the bond between the two families grows deeper.
“We consider Vibhuti our daughter-in-law, even though the wedding never happened,” says Hardik’s elder brother, Rajesh Avaiya. “To honour that, we have added ‘Hardik Avaiya’ to her name. It brings us a strange comfort. Both families had requested Hardik and Vibhuti to stay just one more week and marry here. But they had set their hearts on a winter wedding. God, it seems, had another plan.”
The Patels, too, have folded the Avaiyas into their own family. Visits between the two homes have become frequent and that is how they intend to keep it.
“Our families make it a point to visit each other on various occasions and remember them both,” says Hardik’s sister-in-law, Bhumi Avaiya. “Vibhuti’s father now calls me his daughter and treats me exactly as he would have treated her. We look after one another, and check on each other on phones quite regularly. The two families have become one.”
Hardik and Vibhuti had built their lives together at a retail major in the UK. Their engagement lasted barely a month and a half. But the bond it forged between their families in Surat will, in their memory, last a lifetime.
