Writing

Bonjour à toutes et à tous. Bienvenue. Je vous invite à prendre place. Nous allons commencer. Je vous demanderai, si vous le voulez bien, de bien vouloir prendre place.

C’est une immense joie d’être ici avec vous pour célébrer Nina et Ameet. Entourés de leurs familles, de leurs amis, et de toutes les personnes qui les ont accompagnés jusqu’à ce moment.

Pour celles et ceux que je n’ai pas encore rencontrés, je m’appelle Wylie. (My name is Wylie.) Désolé pour mon français. C’est ma troisième langue. Ma langue maternelle, c’est bien sûr l’occitan-provençal. Ça se voit. Voilà.

Donc, par respect pour la langue française, à laquelle je ne ferai pas honneur à la prononciation, je vais basculer en anglais, merci aux français. Bonne chance.

Good afternoon, everyone.

Before anything else, I want to thank everyone here, and call attention to the rarity and improbability of this occasion. Thank you to everyone, whether you crossed the Atlantic, the Channel, or a friendly, open EU border. Ameet and Nina looked across the thousands of people whose lives have touched theirs and assembled this neighbourhood for the weekend. If you two look out, these are your people. As you form your union, this is your unshakable community. As you two join your lives, you have brought us all together as well.

I also want to thank Craigslist. We could say that this all began in 2022, when I posted an ad looking for a roommate for our six-person coöperative house in Cambridge. I got an email from a stranger. It went like this:

Hi, I am a 30-year-old French woman and I will be starting a postdoc at MIT. You can check my website so you know I’m not a bot, but don’t trust the business-y vibes of that picture. It’s a cover. I have a pretty chill personality.

A few months later, my longtime friend Ameet needed a place to stay and we happen to have a spot open in our house. During what was one of the objectively worst roommate interviews, he famously said, “I’m pretty serious about my career, and I’m not really here to make friends.” Nina came to me, “Who is this guy? Also, who does he think he is? I’m a professor at MIT, does he think I’m sitting around baking cakes all day?” I had to talk Nina into thinking this man was actually sane. Ameet, you owe me one. Little did any of us know what was being set into motion. So if anyone here is looking for love? Try your luck on Craigslist.

So while Nina and Ameet met when we were all roommates together, romance didn’t come until much later. Nina says she had zero recollection of being attracted, but was intrigued by him early on, his mix of seriousness — about sports, work, everything — and how that contrasts with the silliness. How he’s still willing to uproot the plans of his whole weekend by rolling a dice to decide what to do. Ameet had just come out of a long-term relationship, and came to the conclusion that maybe the whole relationship thing isn’t for him.

And as many of us know, the transition from being friends to lovers happened when the two of them started dancing. For these two who are usually busy and hard to make plans to begin with, it really was a cosmic coincidence that they both wanted to learn salsa. They set a plan to meet each Tuesday and learn a few moves a week.

The first time many of us saw them together was when the two of them performed a salsa routine at Cabaret during a weekend away: covered in gold sequins, twirling and swirling. We tried to figure out if they were a couple, but it turns out they were also trying to figure out if they were a couple. While they seem to deny it, if you watch the videos of them dancing, you can see them falling in love. The way Nina looks at Ameet, the way they try the same move fifteen times and both of them laugh nonstop for a whole minute.

Nina and Ameet are so fun to dance with on the dance floor partially because they’re so self sufficient, ridiculous, and confident in how they move. But our friend who was DJing one time looked over and saw that it seemed that something was a bit different. It seemed that Nina wanted someone to dance with.

If you have ever danced salsa, you know that it’s not just learning a repertoire of moves and staying on beat. The leader may start by suggesting a move, but then he pays attention to the follower. “Maybe she didn’t like that move, I won’t do it again.” The follower might notice, “He’s off beat, but I’ll go along with it for a bit and gently bring it back.” Someone might notice, “My partner looks tired, how can I make them feel good?” You give and you take. You sense the soft pressure through a person’s hand pressing on your back, you watch carefully for subtle signals they give with a glance or a push. You learn how the music feels for you, and you sense how it moves the other person, too.

They may have not realised at the time they weren’t only dancing salsa. As they danced, they grew a harmonious attentiveness where they could laugh at themselves along the way. Nina wakes up full of energy each morning, while Ameet takes considerably longer to be a functioning human being. She is so chatty, which he finds cute, and he nods as she gets on a caffeine high on the way to the cafe even before caffeine arrives because she senses caffeine is coming. At night, it’s the opposite, where Ameet may be telling a story and Nina can’t help but yawn in his face, and before long, she is asleep, holding him.

Nina recognised that despite Ameet’s “I’m not here to make friends energy,” he is reliable. Ameet reminds Nina that while she sees herself as a fair and an advocate, she is also wonderfully generous.

That’s their rhythm. The serious they take seriously, the silly they also take seriously. They spend hours discussing books from Nina’s bookshelf, which she says became an entry into each other’s minds. This is why Ameet eventually proposed in a library in Paris. But these are the same people who, on a road trip with friends, got everyone to put ketchup pots on their faces in a Wendy’s.

Before they were together, I knew both of them as my friends who were incurably curious, a bit strange, and most of all, for whom nothing ever seemed to be enough. There is always a new thing to learn, another book to read, another impossible idea worth discussing. If anything, they became more adventurous while together. But something subtle shifted. Their ambition started pulling them in the same direction.

On Ameet’s thirtieth birthday, Ameet was alone in Mexico City while Nina was in Tokyo. While he was walking to start his work day at the WeWork. Nina sent him a message. Can I read it to you all?

You spend so much of your time thinking ahead, planning, playing in your head the next three moves of life’s game of chess. So, as you walk through the doors of this new decade, you might be tempted to rush to the new steps you’ll be able to climb. Before you do that, I hope you take a moment and let yourself feel the relief that comes with the realisation that you are already there. An unshakable foundation has been built. Do you feel its texture and depth? Can you see its roots dug deep, interlaced to build our family’s nest?

I still can’t believe I have the privilege to spend this life with you. Every day feels like a coup.

He told me he sat down on the sidewalk and started crying. For perhaps the first time in his life, he felt something that had always remained just out of reach: enough.

He later went to a temazcal ceremony, which was centred around the idea about how in Spanish, the phrase for giving birth is dar a luz, which means “to give light.” He was moved, feeling first an overwhelming gratitude for his mother. Of the person who, before we can do anything for ourselves, turn the light on for us. Who else is there to be more grateful for?

When I heard loved ones describe Nina and Ameet over the past few weeks, I also thought of that phrase. Dar a luz. Turning on the light may also be a beautiful description of their union. They illuminate what has always been there and maybe has been hiding a bit. When the two of them came together, Ameet’s family noticed how he became more at ease, and it’s easier to be happy when you’re at ease. Nina’s childhood friends recall how her childhood smile came back. Someone told me they add depth and tone and saturation to each other’s colours. In speaking with the people who love them, I asked how they may have changed one another. What I kept hearing was something else: that together, they had become more themselves.

There’s something beautifully ephemeral about dance. Once a song ends, the dance is gone. Across the many times that Nina and Ameet danced, even though it was always a Tuesday and often the same songs, it isn’t the same dance. Sometimes one person’s a bit more tired, or someone’s a bit more adventurous. You’ll hear something different in the music and try something else. Dance asks us to be attentive to the moment that is here now, and won’t be there forever. A wedding is rare in the same way. This group has assembled for the first time. It asks the same of us, to pay attention while this moment is here, because it will never exist in this form again.

And many could not be here today. Nina, today I hope you feel the presence of your mother. How proud she must be as you, your bravery, and the life you have built that inspires us as well.

Another person who could not be here today, Modesto, a writer in Ecuador and a dear friend of Ameet. He and I spoke about love and what he’s learned from his forty-four year marriage. I asked what blessings he may have for Ameet and Nina.

“Consejos, no. Solo solidaridad.” Advice, no. Only solidarity. “Estoy con ellos. Estoy con Ameet y con Nina.” I am with them, I am with Ameet and I am with Nina. As you are among your neighbours here, I hope you feel the warmth of all those who are not here, but who are here with you today and always.

But he did have a wish in the end. “Que sean siempre lo que son.” May you always be who you are.

So I leave you two, Ameet and Nina, with three simple blessings. But since you are people oriented to community, they are also invitations for each of us.

May you keep dancing. Pay close attention, even when you can’t hear the music, and really listen. Remember, it’s how you fell in love. And may the rest of us be reminded by you to pay that kind of attention to the people beside us.

May you keep reminding one another that what you have built is enough. This is enough. Where we are is enough. And may each of us be able to say the same — to feel in whatever moments we can — that the person you’re speaking to, the place where you are, is exactly where you ought to be.

And finally, may you continue to give light to one another. And may we learn to do the same for the people we love: to illuminate what is already there.

Wylie D C Chang
20 June 2026
Mas de l’Entremont, Aix-en-Provence, France