With love, we have to get creative.

Sushil is a co-worker who gets younger each passing day. I tell stories about him to friends and people imagine I'm hanging out with a 20-year-old. Little do they know, he's twice my age, married with a 9-year-old son. Life surprises you with the people who show up in it.

"When I was in university, I was so broke," Sushil starts to tell me. He is a big spender these days but back in the day, he was notorious at scams and for being broke. He tells me a story about Sangita, his now-wife, when they first met in university.

"For some reason, Sangita really wanted milk but I had NO MONEY. Not even a penny!" he exclaims. "I kept asking her, 'Are you sure you don't want water?' But she kept insisting, 'No. I need milk. I want milk.' We were in the caf. So I took a bunch of the milkettes and started pouring them into a cup."

I immediately started dying at this image of 5'6 Sushil with dorky glasses and a very drab, faded wardrobe, carefully opening a million little milkettes and pouring out 5 mL at a time into a Styrofoam cup. These days, Sushil wears $4,000 watches, Lacoste shoes and sports a trendy set of Dolce&Gabbana rectangular frames.

"The worst part is," he says while giggling (yes, he giggles!), "Sangita SAW me doing this."

"So it was love at first sight, eh?" I laugh.

A couple of weeks later, I meet Sangita. This is probably my favourite Sushil story of all time and I can't get it out of my head. I ask her what her memory of the story was.

"I was horrified. I thought, 'I pray none of my friends see him doing this,' otherwise it would have been double embarrassment," she says.

But to me, this is one of my favourite love stories. How some people can get so creative in desperate times in the name of love. Today, Sushil and Sangita are as happy and in love as they were in university. Only now, Sushil can actually afford to buy her some milk.