Wedding speech excerpts: 

"Vish loves a shortcut and if there was a short cut that could be taken, you can be sure he’d think about it! This characteristic became quite apparent to his family from a very young age. When Vish was about 10 years old, he decided to run away from home. This may have been due to a lack of adequate food supplies but who can be sure! Anyway, Vish did all of the things he should like packing his bags, writing a long and emotional good bye note, took some of Dilip Foua’s money, etc etc. But when it came down to it Vish just couldn’t be arsed. ….. So the whole family was searching high and low for him….. and he had decided it would be far easier to just hide out in the back of his dad’s estate car!!! Yes Tins, even at that young an age, Vish was far too lazy to run away!!

Another Character flaw you should know about is that Vish is an eternal optimist. One example of this was when we were all on holiday in Turkey and Vish wanted to go Jet Skiing. Sach is scared of the water and says to Vish who is in the driving seat “please don’t go too fast Vish…..I’m scared of the water and I can’t swim.” Vish turns to Sach and says “don’t worry, I’ll be in control at all times and you’ll be just fine”

20 seconds later…Vish has flipped the jet ski which has landed on Sachin’s leg and Sachin who is now some 10 feet under water is floundering for his dear life. Sach makes it back to shore but it emerges that he has probably broken his leg and will have to spend the rest of the holiday hobbling around like a cripple.

So it’s exactly one year later and Me, Dips and Sach are holidaying in Greece. This time Vish decides we should go on the Ringos. Which involves a high powered speedboat pulling along the sea where a speedboat pulls you across the sea in an inflatable tube.

Sach, remembering last year’s accident is visibly worried and protests that he is not going to participate in the event. However, Vish says “don’t worry Sach we’ll go nice and slow so you’ll be just fine”. Sach looks into Vish’s trustworthy big brown eyes and surprisingly agrees (much the same way Tins did when she said I do!).

So whilst Sach is in the hut putting on his lifejacket Vish tells the driver out of earshot that he wants a bigger speedboat which will “really make us fly.” And that is exactly what happens. About 2 mins into the ride, Sach goes flying off his ringo and tumbles into the water again. We notice Sach is taking a very long time to get back into his ringo and it emerges that on impact with the water Sach has damaged his other leg and will have to spend another holiday walking around on crutches! I don’t know whether to blame Vish or Sach for that one!

But this is just an example of the way Vish’s re-assuring words seem to re-assure people and get them to agree to do things they know they probably shouldn’t. Much the same way when he asked Tins to marry him and she actually said yes – we were as surprised as you guys were at that one.

Indeed, holidays seem to be when Vish’s powers are at their greatest and his penchant for mishaps comes into its own. About two years ago Me and Vish were in Marbella and had to catch the flight to Sachin’s wedding in Madrid. The check in time for the flight was 9:30am but at this time we find ourselves waking up still drunk from the night before, fully clothed with our contact lenses still in.

This is nothing new and is just a typical night out with Vish but I am obviously panicked and worrying about missing our flight. This is when Vish turns to me and casts me under his spell he says “lets just chill out Nik, everything will sort itself out and we’ll be fine”. So I do chill out. About an hour later are free rolling into a toll booth on the Spanish motorway in our hire car which has run out of petrol. We have missed the flight and we can’t pay the toll charge because Vish has lost his wallet containing all the Euros.

The moral of this story is Tins, that when you’re on Safaris with Vish and you find yourself in a potentially hazardous situation involving some big scary animal and Vish turns to you and says “don’t worry honey, I’m in control, everything will be fine” ……best to just run for safety!  :-)