The Wedding Day

I suppose it wasnt too wrong on my part not to have blogged for over a month now. I am a newly married man you know. My identity has suddenly assumed new dimensions. I am now not alone. There is someone with me when I am back home from work. Waiting for me. And there is something very cozy about that thought.

The days after September 29th have been a blur. The wedding went of pretty well I thought. I did undergo a lot of mental anguish over the issue of the mangalsutra (or 'minnu maala' as we call it in Malayalam). Apparently, there is a particular way of tying the knot when the man ties the thread around the woman's neck. And it had to be that particular way and no other. So on the eve of my wedding, my uncle showed me how. He said that the knot should be such that if you pull it out, it should come out cleanly. So I learnt it that way. Early next day, even as I am getting ready for my big event, another uncle comes in

"So, have you learnt how to tie the knot?" I showed him how. "It's wrong,"he said and proceeded to show me how else I could tie the knot. Now I was confused. But I learnt the second method. By the time all guests had come home and we were ready to leave for the church, my brothers come inside. Same question again. They had tried to show me how to tie the knot the previous night, but we ended up nowhere. Now we were at it again. I showed them the second method. It's all wrong, they said. You have to tie it in such a way that the knot should not come out if you try to. How do you like that? Here I was, just about to leave home for church, tie the knot in just about an hours time and I still didnt know how exactly to tie it!!! And trust me, this is one hell of a nerve wracking task. And I didnt know how to go about it. When it finally was time though, I just tied a rudimentary double knot. But I still took a good one minute tying it. The first knot happened easily enough, but when I took the ends around for another knot, it just wouldnt go in. After much coaxing and cajoling, one end finally went in and it was done. People later asked me why I took so long in doing that. I quipped that I was making sure it was a knot for a lifetime.

Just after this time consuming act, fireworks filled the air. It wasnt as fluent as I had hoped it would be. There had been some light rain that morning and that dampened the crackers a little. So some sputtered, some stuttered, but they went off all the same. I was damn lucky that our parish priest didnt put a stop to proceedings then and there. During a previous wedding, he had temporarily suspended the service and gotten angry. He had resumed only after giving the crowd in general a good dressing down. My mom's long hours at prayer paid returns. The priest said nothing, at least, not that week. Two weeks later, while talking about how people paid a lot of attention to materialistic preparations (and not to spiritual preparation) he mentioned "a wedding that we had here a couple of weeks back. Crackers went off right in the middle of the service..." and he didnt stop for the next five minutes. I could have used some publicity but not at my local parish!

Post April 2007,I hadnt really spent much time thinking about the implications of marriage and how that would change my world. The married Everyman is now around 40 days old. And he still hasnt gotten around to thinking about it. Life goes on - in a different fashion though.

Later...

Shain


PS: I had written this around a week back..it was only now that I managed to come around to a net cafe and actually post this!!!