Tales from the wedding – 3 | Post 3

Let’s talk about food, coz we love it, so much so that on most days we wake up to have breakfast. And while having breakfast we discuss the plans for Lunch and Dinner and the numerous in between eats. Are you all like this too? Or are we a mad household.

So for people who are obsessive about food on a regular basis, Punjab can be the most lethal place to be. That too in the hands of dotting parents and in-laws who always think that you have lost more weight from the last time they saw you. Parents come with special eyesight I guess, one which enables them to shed off the “oh-so-prominent” kilos from their children.

This last trip was no different. Add to it the magic of the wedding and you can guess what I am talking about. Each meal was an elaborate affair with starters and dessert thrown in. There is no doubt that Punjbi food is delicious and I think I have finally cracked the code as well. It’s that divine ingredient called BUTTER or its close cousin GHEE, which are added to each and every dish in no small quantity. The more liberal you are with the usage, the better the outcome will be. Sigh!!

Our family cook/halwai – Mr Desa, a tiny, thin man with a nerve of steel was commissioned with the job of preparing each and every meal mostly breakfast and lunches since dinners were at the venues where functions were happening. Me and MIL sat down and prepared this elaborate menu for each day of the festivity. This was duly passed on to Mr Desa so he could arrange for the ingredients.

I was fascinated, least to say, to see him at work. What multitasking, what organizing capabilities and what meticulous working manner. He could put any of those highly paid MBA’s to shame. With 2 helpers, he rocked the show and prepared food for anywhere between 50 to 100 people, meal after meal, bang on time, served with panache and tasting absolutely delightful.

Both Aman and I came back with additions of more than a few shameless kilos. Cruel cruel life this is, I tell you. So while I do realize the mounting weight and while I do procrastinate about  doing something about it, the food and my love for it grows and grows!

Tales from the wedding – 2

Click here for "Tale from the wedding - 1"

The timing of the trip back to in-laws place was a near perfect disaster recipe. Let’s just say, being married for almost 5 yrs and having no children to show off, isn’t exactly a very exciting combination, for I knew the kind of looks and sneers I would get.

So the 5^th wedding anniversary was precisely 2 days before the BILs wedding date, which meant that all relatives had safely landed and the celebrations had begun. The spouse made me cut a huge huge cake with a big “happy 5^th” written on top of it. So memories were refreshed for even those relatives who had forgotten about it.

And thus began the lecture marathon from all and sundry and mostly those who matter little. From telling me how I was messing up with my body, to blaming me for coming in the nature’s desired path and then going on and saying how I was depriving the parent in-laws of a “grand son”. Phew. I did remain calm all through. Coz it was more important to ensure that the wedding happened properly. And frankly I was in no mood of altercation over this non issue. In these 5 years I have moved on from being bothered about this. It’s our life and our baby and we will have it when we want it. Nothing else matters.

This post is not about “others advising me on having children”. I am sure a lot of Indian married women have heard enough and more about this. What is rather intriguing is how consistent each of those uncles and aunties were in blessing me with a “SON”.  Absolutely no two ways about it. Each and every blessing that I received was for a son. I mean bless me with a healthy baby; won’t that be a wiser thing to do?

Finally I did retaliate, more from the intention to irritate this old neighbor. The moment she said “God bless you with a son very soon”, I did ask her “why son why not a daughter?” And I could see her visibly flushed. Pink in cheeks, she said, that a daughter can happen later but first born should be a son.  I glared at her against my better judgment, but she got the message, mumbled something and left. It was actually quite funny to see this effect my words had on this woman. I guess it was a first for her.

Now don’t confuse me with a pseudo feminist.  I am no man hater. But I have no preference when it comes to children. When we decide to go in for a baby, I will only hope and pray for a healthy child .  Nothing wrong in wishing those, right? 

Tales from the wedding - 1

Lots and lots happened. But of course, I can’t write them all here so let me narrate this one occasion for the sake of being narrated.

Out of all people critical for a wedding to be concluded in Northern India, Punjab, to be more specific, one very important category is that of the Eunuchs. So while you need the band walas, the mehendi walas, the cooks, the press wala, the pundits, the beauty salon lady, the guy who will put up the lights and tents, the flower wala, the photographer etc etc, the wedding cannot be treated as official commenced until the “Eunuchs” visit your home and bless the new couple.

They turn up mostly uninvited, curtsey, their impeccable network, which informs them of such occasions. And once there, they won’t depart unless paid a good hefty amount, clothes and sweets.

This is exactly what happened post the wedding. A messenger came home informing us that the Eunuchs will visit the household in the evening and that we should be prepared. I had never seen such a thing before, although vaguely aware of the concept. What followed was quite interesting. I saw my mother-in-law, asking the maid to go and inform the neighbors about the same. Some phone calls were made too.

Come evening I saw hordes of women from the neighborhood descending into our house. They were all there to see the blessings. And then the Eunuchs came all done up in this really bright and expensive attire. They came with their band of 2 musicians. Both us daughter in laws were asked to dress up and sit pretty.

What followed was quite hilarious. The Eunuchs danced and sang for close to 30 mins. Actually, if you ask me it was quite entertaining although I didn’t follow half the things they said. Post all this song and dance the newlywed girl was blessed with, guess what? Quite obvious, a son! And of course I wasn’t spared too. A son for me too!!

Post which my MIL parted with quite a hefty sum, some nice clothes and sweets! This is the tradition there. One doesn’t upset them. And no, there is no fear or irritation in giving them the money. In fact like all other wedding expense, even this is accounted for. People willingly give them what they ask for.

This is a category of people, considered to be among the lowest end of social strata, abused and cursed.  And here they were being revered as the messenger of good luck and blessings. They make their living by giving blessings and they are very sincere about it. They have accepted their misfortune and have made a livelihood out of it. One could see the desire to break ranks and live a good life glistening in their eyes and yet they performed what they were expected to with outmost honesty. Yes, it was indeed a very strange experience and very humbling too. 

To India

Come Friday and we are off to India. Our first trip home since we moved to Singapore last year and the occasion is as joyous as it can get. Its Aman’s brothers wedding. Which means there will be much family time, finger licking food, clothes, jewelry, dancing, singing and the works!

Yes, yet another Big fat Punjabi wedding. And since I am the one and only Bhabhi (sister-in-law) there is much to look forward to. I have always been a great fan of Indian traditions and I know that there are times when we will go overboard with stuff. And maybe in retrospect we will think if there was a point in all the extravagance. But as of now, I just want to go with the flow of the celebrations.

So shopping for gifts has been done for some selective set of relatives. Buying gifts for all wasn’t an option. It would have emptied our pockets and we would have ended up paying for extra baggage too. So we decided to act sane and buy gifts for some of the folks. The remaining shall be gifted on our next trip.

As for my shopping for the wedding, it’s non-existent. I obviously cannot buy Indian clothes from here. So all my shopping which is like a lot will happen in India. I have less than 24hrs in Delhi to pick up as much as I can. It would be an understatement to say I am nervous. From my past experiences it takes but a week or so of dedicated effort to get the entire ensemble ready. And here I have just a couple of days, so tell me how on earth I do it. I need nothing less than a miracle to help me sail through. And no this is no drama, and I am so hoping that the ladies out there will understand! Send some prayers my way will you??

But keeping this earth shattering problem aside, I am super duper excited. I am so looking forward to welcome a new member to Malhotra household. And obviously there are very few things in the world like a Punjabi wedding you see. And you got to attend one to know what I mean. And I get to meet my parents too who will be very much part of the wedding so that’s the added bonus. All in all, looking forward to some major fun, provided I get my clothes ready, else there will be one grumpy, irritated me and that’s no good person to deal with! 

Even Good guys make mistake - Post 8

This was my FB status message a few days back and a lot of my friends assumed it was about Aman. Fortunately it wasn’t. My guy usually doesn’t make mistakes and even if he did I wouldn’t talk about it on FB, would I?

This is about someone else. Let me explain.

Recently I met this newly wed couple. While I have known and respected the guy for a couple of years, it was the first time I was meeting the girl. The guy is a mature, intelligent and an extremely smart fellow. He is a good human being and overall a nice person to know. He is good at his work and quite ambitious. And when he announced marriage we were very happy. It was a marriage of choice and he had known the girl for a few months.

I am sure they are in love. And I am sure they are happy. But what shocked me was the “couple itself”. They were just so opposite. And not opposite in that nice way which makes one go all mush.

They were opposite in this very weird manner. While the guy is all sober and intelligent, the girl was all silly and full of giggles. I surely don’t mind people who laugh a lot, but laughing without a reason is such a put off. The girl was also definitely low on IQ, a bit of a show off and seemed like a brat. She certainly wasn’t someone I could manage a decent conversation with.

Which obviously made me think what my friend saw in her. She was good looking. But it ended at that. So did my friend get so floored by the way she looked that he didn’t bother to go beyond that? So is it that men still just want eye candy as wives? What happens when this initial fascination with looks dies down? Will then the stupidity start bothering him? And wont it be too late? What will he do when he wants to talk? Will he still enjoy the giggles as much? Well, that only time will tell, but as of now, I think he did make a mistake.

The wedding story - Post 4

Girl: my parents agreed

Boy: mine did too

What??

No eloping, no drama, no blackmailing, no Bollywood moments??

Well that’s exactly what happened. When Aman and I decided to get married our parents were more than happy. They took charge of the situation as if they had gone all the way to find me a groom and him a bride!! No one complained. Not even that vague mammi or that chacha who loves conflicts!! Huh. What dampener.

So all my hopes of having some thrill during my wedding was gone. Now what stories would I tell my grand children? I wanted to be seen as this cool grand mom who had to fight all odds to win her prince charming. All my dreams were crushed by these ever understanding set of parents??

A day before the wedding both his and mine relatives danced away all night. I felt like going and reminding them that this was a love marriage? But they were in some different state of euphoria. Even the fact that both Aman and I were the first ones to get married in respective families and all younger cousins would follow suit did not deter them.

So much so that on the eve of the wedding I almost wanted to run away with Aman. That would have been the first of its kind? Where the bride and the groom elope with each other, while the relatives are busy dancing!!!

Now every time I meet these couples who have braved all odds to get married I feel like kicking them. They will have these lovely stories to tell. How her father house arrested her. How he was kicked out of the house. How the brother threatened the guy etc etc. and all I can do is smile!!

I have been missing

Part deliberately, part not so deliberately.

Deliberately - because I was at home, for a family function. And I still feel guilty if I spent time blogging when I could spend all that time with folks. So this time consciously I kept myself from visiting the blogosphere. Tell me, do you also feel conscious if you spend time on internet when family is around? Is it normal for me to feel this way?

Not so deliberately – was because as soon as I landed in good old Bangalore I fell sick. It started with the usual, cough and then cold and then fever. But it went to become very bad. It turned out to be an acute case of bacterial infection in the throat. I am much better now, thank you.

Wedding was a grand affair. All my clothes were appreciated to the hilt and I managed to look good on all days (I am just being modest; I was looking gorgeous on most days).

This post is to announce that more of me is back, what with all the awesome food and sweets, a couple of kgs have been shamelessly added.

Off To Punjab

We leave for Punjab tonight.
This is my first ever trip to Punjab during such extreme winters. Bangalore has a way of spoiling us. Be it summers or winters, all months here are just so wonderful.

We are off to attend Sis-in-laws wedding. A grand Punjabi wedding it will be. This time for sure I’ll do a post on Punjabi weddings once I get back.

This vacation was planned almost 6 months back. All necessary arrangements were done accordingly (read leave approvals), but owe it to the market conditions or my luck, my leaves have been chopped to half. This meant I either postponed my travel by a few days or travel on the set date but work from Aman’s home. We choose the second option.
These days not many of us go on a non working vacation, I mean we are reachable most of the time. But work from home means I’ll have to be in-front of my laptop continuously from morning to late evening. Which means I miss out on all the fun and the last minute wedding preparations which at this time will be at its helm. But I am not complaining. At least I have the evenings and nights with family there.

Aman has been transported into a different world all together. He is so full of stories of his childhood. The winter afternoons, the fruit baskets, the parathas, the pani puris, the kite flying. I think it’s a good idea to make him do a guest post on this.

I will not be very regular on the Blogosphere for a while now. You see I still feel guilty spending too much time reading and writing blogs when family is around. So will keep hopping here now and then.

Only a few more hours before we leave,and packing is still in shambles. Don’t want to repeat what happened at Bhaiya’s wedding.

So off I go. See ya all soon..

I am finally legally married...

After 2 and half years of our traditional wedding, Aman and I finally registered our marriage on 7th July’ 08.
Its not that we didn’t want or try to get our marriage registered before but our great Indian Judicial System was a huge deterrent.

.....

And this is how –
We got married in Kapurthala, Punjab (Aman’s hometown) and there wasn’t time to get the wedding registered. We just had a couple of days there and all that time went in meeting relatives and visiting temples.
The next logical step was to get the wedding registered in Bangalore (the place where we live). Again we didn’t fulfill lot many conditions –
- The wedding didn’t take place in Bangalore and so the court couldn’t register it
- Both Aman and me hadn’t stayed here long enough to be recognized as domicile citizens???
- we didn’t have important (??) documents like Ration card or the Voters id card

Fine, so we thought we’ll do this holy task in Ranchi (my hometown). Now who ever is familiar with the working of a town like Ranchi will know that even if you have all the documents in place and even if you have all the right contacts you still need to make almost all the people in the ladder “happy”. Thanks to Dad who did all that and much more, we were given a date to come and register the wedding.
It was a bright Friday morning, while I was getting ready to be married once again to the same man, we got some awesome news. Apparently one man in protest of some new government policy had tried committing suicide in public. He was battling for life for past week and finally on the same morning as my wedding registration he succumbed to his injuries and died. As a result all government organizations including the court were abruptly shut to mourn his death. And with that the possibility of our registering the wedding too died.

Now in this recent trip for Bhiaya’s wedding, we finally managed to finish this mammoth task. The actual registration didn’t take more than 5 minutes. That was disappointing. They should have atleast respected our efforts and made it a look big. But anyways, all said and done, I am finally legally married :)

July Update

It’s been a rather funny month. Rains in Orissa were very heavy on our pockets. We (Aman, me and parents – in – law) were to travel from Bangalore to Ranchi for Bhai’s wedding. All tickets were booked on the comparatively economical mode of travel - the TRAIN. But just a day prior to our departure, all trains to the eastern part of the country were cancelled. As a result we had to fly to Calcutta (as there is no direct connectivity) and then take the train to Ranchi. There goes all the planning to be sane and reasonable for a change. Return was also the same story. But this time more than rains it was Aman and his work. So we had to pre-pone our return by a day, again making the already light wallets some more lighter.

Wedding was a grand affair. All money shopping for it feels like a worth while expenditure. I actually like weddings. I like the state of happiness the entire family is in. I like the fact that my otherwise short tempered family is quite patient for a change. I like meeting all relatives and catching up on the lives of distant cousins. I like food and lastly I like dressing up. And bhaiya’s wedding in all possible manners did live upto these expectations.

One incident worth a mention is Aman and his "Suit". We reached Ranchi on the morning of 4th July. The engagement was scheduled for 5th July. Packing is almost always a last minute affair for us and in this last minute Aman conveniently forgot to pack "The Suit" he was planning to wear for the engagement. "The Suit" that he had got made more than a month back after a lot of trips to all possible malls and stores. In such scenarios the most viable and the only possible option looks like wearing something else. And in case you don’t have an extra dress then buy one. But unfortunately or rather stubbornly these options weren’t available for him.

The solution – he asked his brother who was in Bangalore but not in our home to break the lock, pick up "The Suit" and air cargo it the same day. All this did happen although with a whole lot of twists and turns mostly credited to the landlord who vehemently opposed the idea of breaking the lock. "The Suit" was sent through air cargo on the night of 4th to Delhi. After spending a night in Delhi the suit was sent to Ranchi on 5th. Some million phone calls followed to keep a track of "The Suit" and ensure it was boarding all the right flights. We picked it up from the airport at 7 pm and Aman was wearing it at 8pm.

Talk about being determined to make things happen

For Records, this is the Suit I am talking about !!! And for those who don’t recognize him already, he is the tall guy in the center.

The Red and Cream Bangles

One thing that I really miss about "no longer being newly married" are the Red and Cream Bangles more commonly referred to as “the Churha”. Churhas are a set of red and cream ivory bangles that are slipped on to the wrist of the bride by her maternal uncle and aunt. These are traditionally worn on the day of the wedding and the bride continues to wear them for a few months some even wearing them for over a year.

My Churhas were exceptionally beautiful with an energetic shade of burgundy and were ornamented with exquisite stone work.

I wore them for over 9 months and they never failed to make me feel special. I live in Bangalore, a city where unlike north India you will not find too many girls wearing these. One extremely hilarious incident that I remember is when a colleague in office commented “Iya, I know your bangles are very beautiful but why do you wear them everyday??”

During those 9 months, I took it on as a personal agenda to educate one and all who bothered asking me about these bangles and in turn educated quite a few Bangaloreans as to what their significance was.

Now every time I look at a newly wed Punjabi girl wearing Churhas, I can’t help but feel nostalgic. Some things are meant to happen only once in life and wearing the Churahas is surely one of those.

Ps: Looks a bit incomplete, right??? Actually it is. I wrote this ages back and never posted. Today when I re-looked at this, I just wanted it to be on my blog. I am not going to add the anything more to the post as I am unable to get my thoughts together.