Your typical Bollywood movies will have you believe that the only person who may be unhappy at the wedding of a girl would be her scorned former-lover. Otherwise, Suraj Barjatya or not, all directors will show you that every person around the bride, from her BFFs to the neighbouring aunty’s visiting NRI grandson’s friang girlfriend keep giggling like gassed lunatics. Hell they even have the pet dog wagging its tail. But most unbelievable in this already incredible situation is the house-help who will be merrily using the world’s largest karchi to cook halwa in the world’s largest karhai for the gassed lunatics described above and will also be smiling amidst this most tyrannous situation. This, I have to say is stretching even fiction far too much.
I mean have you ever tried asking your house-help to sweep one square inch of floor outside your gate? Or to wash three extra plates that may have been used by some damned guests who came over for dinner? Or to sweep off a stray cobweb that has made itself at home somewhere right over where you head rests at night? Somehow I do not picture my house-help smiling so benevolently if she were asked to cook halwa for a hundred gassed lunatics with the world’s largest karchi in the world’s largest karhai.
But I digress. The purpose of referring to Bollywood movies was to make a point. In actual-life my friends, it is not just the scorned former-lover who will be sad to hear that the female lead’s getting hitched to another. Let me tell you the story of Arshia and her nikah.
While yet unmarried and unshipped-off, Arshia used to live in the obscure lanes of a small colony from where she ran a very successful tailoring business. Women from all over the town and beyond- even overseas (Disclaimer: I am not sure of this fact but it does add to the credibility of my shameless exaggerations; however, I would mention here that I did take a friend of mine from Dubai to Arshia for a salwar-kameez stitched from here so if we ignore the fact that she is a Garhwali who belongs from Dehradun, we can qualify the overseas bit) - would seek Arshia’s brilliance to get salwaar-kameez stitched in a way that, they believed would flatter their misunderstood curves- but that in reality only made them look gigantically-breasted.
In embroidery, Arshia’s skill rivaled nobody's (Disclaimer: ‘nobody’ from among the people I bothered to compare her skill against, who were... well, OK let’s just call this one a figure of speech).
Legend has it, that property rates and rentals around Arshia’s house were higher than the average of property rates in this part of town because women wanted to be as close to her house as they could so that they could visit her to give her new tailoring orders, check on their already-given orders or just to see what other women were getting stitched.
Arshia’s magic was powerful in its pull and among the women who had flown smack into the tailoring magnet and now lay dangling helplessly but securely against its all-consuming power were- regrettably- the women in my family.
Buaji and Simrin mami top this list of Arshia-maniacs and I have to say the way they sought the poor little tailor to stitch new pairs of salwar-kameez bordered obsession worthy of restraining orders. Between themselves, their otherwise amicable relationship would enter terse, cold, misty weathers during the following times:
- When the subject of wardrobes was discussed.
- When it was festival time- say diwali, holi (yes, I know; it is anybody’s guess) etc.
- When it was not festival time- say your usual days.
- When it was anti-festival time- say shraad.
- When (and here the levels of crazy flew right through the thermometer for buaji) somebody from any part of the country would be flying to Australia, where her daughter and daughter-in-law are based.
Although buaji and Simrin mami were top in the heap of frenzied women seeking Arshia, the other women in my house were also contributors to the mania. Whether it was Rads’ and SP’s mom, my own mom or Monu-Sonu’s mom- nobody was spared from the madness. Often when my mother, who lives out of town would come visiting, conversation over the evening tea would consist of negotiations that were based on each party trying to prove whose need for a new pair or salwar-kameez was greater.
It was then natural that the news of Arshia’s wedding was received by the Kakkar-and-allied-women in the same way as a crack-addict would receive the news that his drug-dealer was getting married and moving away. The news of the wedding that would temporarily dislodge my family's matriarchs, I am told, was first given to Simrin mami (whose dwelling was in immediate vicinity of the tailor) by a blushing Arshia. Mami then returned home in a daze, clutching the last piece of art that the magician had created and immediately set about making the necessary calls.
Now on the matter of our phone-calls habits, please await the required post that shall be uploaded soon and link updated here but we digress again (not my fault, we Punjabis are very complex in our stereotypes).
The reaction to the news was the same for everybody who received it:
Shock-Denial-Realization of Inappropriate Reaction (it may be reminded the stray reader that this was news of a girl’s wedding- Feeble Attempt at Making Amends by Feigning Gladness- Giving Up Said Feeble Attempt- Inquiring When the Wedding Date had Been Set to Estimate How Many Stitches Were Left in the Master's Sewing Machine, if you know what I mean- Disconnecting Phone to Collect Self.
Arshia has long since wed and is happy at her home that is located at a safe distance from the maniac aunties of my house and neighbourhood. At her wedding, she had been monetarily surprised to observe how many women greeted her with quivering lips and handed the shagun to her with trembling hands but the blessed girl thankfully misunderstood the gestures to be of happiness rather than of despair.
Monday, October 25, 2010
The ‘On the Side’ Series
So there are several weddings that have been happening around us and since none of us remaining siblings would be worth anything to any mildly-intelligent-and-above young man/woman, thereby making the possibility of our weddings rather remote, I will talk about these other weddings hereon in the present series, which owing to obvious reasons would fall under ‘On the Side’ category.
Saturday, October 9, 2010
The fear of silver jubilee!
IF: This is the year your parents are celebrating twenty-five years of their marriage- as a blissfully happy couple who have grown from strength to strength and raised a beautiful and normal bunch of children
OR
as a pretending-to-be-blissfully-happy-couple-who-have-grown-from-strength-to-strength-and-raised-a-beautiful-and-normal-bunch-of-children but who really are opponents in a 25-year old war where they have managed to make a few babies in between fights and raised them to be total screw-ups.
BEWARE.
Whatever kind of folks you have had the misfortune of being born to, do not let your sentiments of this big day dilute your otherwise rather blunt instincts. Let me tell you why.
Remember those Madhuri Dikshit movies in the 80s where the 25th anniversary celebrations were used by the couple to make unexpected announcement of their child's engagement much to the surprise of the poor child and in some cases the person chosen to be the future spouse of the child? Yeah, those images still fondly float in the minds of all parents.
I personally do not understand what the whole fantasy with holding your precious' engagement party with your own silver jubilee marriage celebrations really is. I mean don't parents crib enough about children coming in the way of everything they ever wanted to do, without adding children coming in way of such a major milestone in the parents' lives? Of course, from an economical point of view, it does save the expense of one party while ensuring that the gifts are different for the parents' anniversary and the child's engagement.
There is one theory that my analytical mind proposes to explain this crazy fantasy among the folks. This theory is called the "TIMELY TRAGEDY" theory, which is as under:
For every conventionally-thinking individual, it is not only important to reach out to each tragedy of life eagerly but also to reach out the same tragedies in a timely manner. So, if you have secured a Government job by the age of 21 years, you have achieved one tragedy timely. If you are married before you turn 24, you have timely secured another tragedy to your belt. The first child is a very important tragedy that must happen before you have celebrated your first anniversary to be timely. The second child should come as a wailing, head-splitting tragedy two years after the birth of its older tragic sibling but must of the opposite sex for the conditions of the TIMELY TRAGEDY theory to be fulfilled. By this arrangement, the eldest child would have reached out and grabbed the first tragedy of his life- a secure job by the time s/he has turned 24 and after letting your precious apple experience the biggest of all tragedies of life we call reality for about one year, you can safely reach out and grab your biggest milestones in the "TIMELY TRAGEDY" way of living- celebrating your 25th marriage anniversary as your child is engaged-to-be-married on the same day.
So for all of you who are obliviously planning a grand event to celebrate 25 years of your parents waking up to see the same faces every morning (at least that is the hope), do keep in mind that there is a reason why two people will smile bravely and pretend to want to celebrate a life-ruining moment, which ironically is followed by waking up to see each-other's faces again until merciful death doth do them part.
OR
as a pretending-to-be-blissfully-happy-couple-who-have-grown-from-strength-to-strength-and-raised-a-beautiful-and-normal-bunch-of-children but who really are opponents in a 25-year old war where they have managed to make a few babies in between fights and raised them to be total screw-ups.
BEWARE.
Whatever kind of folks you have had the misfortune of being born to, do not let your sentiments of this big day dilute your otherwise rather blunt instincts. Let me tell you why.
Remember those Madhuri Dikshit movies in the 80s where the 25th anniversary celebrations were used by the couple to make unexpected announcement of their child's engagement much to the surprise of the poor child and in some cases the person chosen to be the future spouse of the child? Yeah, those images still fondly float in the minds of all parents.
I personally do not understand what the whole fantasy with holding your precious' engagement party with your own silver jubilee marriage celebrations really is. I mean don't parents crib enough about children coming in the way of everything they ever wanted to do, without adding children coming in way of such a major milestone in the parents' lives? Of course, from an economical point of view, it does save the expense of one party while ensuring that the gifts are different for the parents' anniversary and the child's engagement.
There is one theory that my analytical mind proposes to explain this crazy fantasy among the folks. This theory is called the "TIMELY TRAGEDY" theory, which is as under:
For every conventionally-thinking individual, it is not only important to reach out to each tragedy of life eagerly but also to reach out the same tragedies in a timely manner. So, if you have secured a Government job by the age of 21 years, you have achieved one tragedy timely. If you are married before you turn 24, you have timely secured another tragedy to your belt. The first child is a very important tragedy that must happen before you have celebrated your first anniversary to be timely. The second child should come as a wailing, head-splitting tragedy two years after the birth of its older tragic sibling but must of the opposite sex for the conditions of the TIMELY TRAGEDY theory to be fulfilled. By this arrangement, the eldest child would have reached out and grabbed the first tragedy of his life- a secure job by the time s/he has turned 24 and after letting your precious apple experience the biggest of all tragedies of life we call reality for about one year, you can safely reach out and grab your biggest milestones in the "TIMELY TRAGEDY" way of living- celebrating your 25th marriage anniversary as your child is engaged-to-be-married on the same day.
So for all of you who are obliviously planning a grand event to celebrate 25 years of your parents waking up to see the same faces every morning (at least that is the hope), do keep in mind that there is a reason why two people will smile bravely and pretend to want to celebrate a life-ruining moment, which ironically is followed by waking up to see each-other's faces again until merciful death doth do them part.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
The revival
In the battle between the wedders (i.e. pestering family) and the weddees (i.e. us, the victims who are deemed marriageable solely by virtue of age), the wedders won the First Battle of Gurgaon and have taken away Rads on their side. I say that for two reasons- one, she has been married for over a year now and two, she has lately taken to asking the rest of us about our marriage plans, thereby showing tendencies alarmingly similar to the wedders.
Anyhoo, the battle won, the wedders returned to their forts while us, the remaining five cousins crawled back into our tattered barracks. Here, we licked our wounds and then got up to strengthen our defences and devise impressively innovative means to resist future attacks by our beloved family, whose usually moderately-tolerable voices on such occasions transform into something akin to the sound of nails screeching against blackboards to our ears.
Ramu, for example contemplated lying about his sexual preferences and we were all quite impressed by that idea. After all, I don’t really think the family would have nagged him quite so much to find a suitable boy! But with fears of being disowned from the family’s considerable debts, Ramu thought of another brilliant plan. He quit his cushiony, corporate job, turned his back from his 9.something package which, in a couple of months would become 10.6 or so (how much is 80k times 12?) and decided to actually practice law as a junior to an advocate, who when extremely pleased with Ramu, gives him something to the tune of 7.5.
No, no, before you say that is not so bad, let me tell you, by '7.5', I mean 7.5k (7500) in a month.
This brilliant move will go down in this blog in black letters as the rest of the text since we don’t have the golden lettering option yet (I think and I don’t care if I am wrong about the font colours so please take your gyaan about blogs elsewhere).
Susu has very conveniently found himself a girl who is studying medicine so he is in no immediate danger and needs no reinforcements or added defences because really, what can you do? The family also realizes that with the extreme pressure of studying human anatomy, the burden of marriage really cannot be expected to be borne by the poor girl. Now had she been studying anything else, it would have been a no-issue.
Similarly, Sonu being the youngest of us all is in no real danger but has still created a defence for herself by using reverse psychology on her parents. She watches for any group of three or more family members who may be sitting and chatting or working and when she finds such a group, she walks up to them and starts talking about her marriage in that way, which is very deliberately indiscreet but makes the listener feel the speaker is trying unsuccessfully to be subtle. The family thinks they would not want her to think about marriage so early so they start talking about her education and career and thereby never bring up the topic of her marriage.
I am not sure what Monu's defense is but I am afraid my sister is in the line of fire. In a Suraj Bharjatya movie, I would have thrown myself in front of her and said "No, marry me. Leave her, let her live. She is still so young." In the real life, however, I have written I am afraid about her defenses and that, I feel is sufficient as far as sibling-concern goes.
I have devised a simple, three-step routine, which is fool-proof: Agree, Distract, Exit.
Here is how it works:
Step 1- Agree: When sat down by the family for “the talk” (now I wish it was about the birds and bees, really!), plaster a melancholy, ironic expression on your face and start nodding solemnly, as if you totally agree with what is being said about age and life partner and support and blah blah blah.
Step 2- Distract: Such conversations will inevitably lead you to the opening themselves. Wait until the gyaan is over and they say “What do you think?” or a string of words that betrays the same sentiment. Here you know it is time for step 2. You laugh softly and briefly- almost a cross between a sigh and laugh really- to betray irony and a hint of bitterness. Then you start talking about your diabetes and how that scares you and how you feel you will not live long enough (insert sobs here) and you don’t want to burden somebody with this heavy weight of what is almost a sword hanging on your head (insert a steady trickle of tears here) and you so want to work and be independent but you are so scared about your eyes being damaged (insert hysterical theatrics here) or your legs being amputated.
Step 3- Exit: Somewhere during this torrent, the family members will get up and come to you to console you about your tragedies and assure you that there will be so many nice boys in your “community” (by which they mean diabetic boys) and that you should not lose hope about your life, which is going to be long and happy. You do not let them finish their consolation and get up in the middle of their honeyed words to say you are too upset to talk about this and walk off.
PS- If you are not diabetic or blessed with a chronic condition that puts you off the conventional marriage market, I can only say: tough luck!
Anyhoo, the battle won, the wedders returned to their forts while us, the remaining five cousins crawled back into our tattered barracks. Here, we licked our wounds and then got up to strengthen our defences and devise impressively innovative means to resist future attacks by our beloved family, whose usually moderately-tolerable voices on such occasions transform into something akin to the sound of nails screeching against blackboards to our ears.
Ramu, for example contemplated lying about his sexual preferences and we were all quite impressed by that idea. After all, I don’t really think the family would have nagged him quite so much to find a suitable boy! But with fears of being disowned from the family’s considerable debts, Ramu thought of another brilliant plan. He quit his cushiony, corporate job, turned his back from his 9.something package which, in a couple of months would become 10.6 or so (how much is 80k times 12?) and decided to actually practice law as a junior to an advocate, who when extremely pleased with Ramu, gives him something to the tune of 7.5.
No, no, before you say that is not so bad, let me tell you, by '7.5', I mean 7.5k (7500) in a month.
This brilliant move will go down in this blog in black letters as the rest of the text since we don’t have the golden lettering option yet (I think and I don’t care if I am wrong about the font colours so please take your gyaan about blogs elsewhere).
Susu has very conveniently found himself a girl who is studying medicine so he is in no immediate danger and needs no reinforcements or added defences because really, what can you do? The family also realizes that with the extreme pressure of studying human anatomy, the burden of marriage really cannot be expected to be borne by the poor girl. Now had she been studying anything else, it would have been a no-issue.
Similarly, Sonu being the youngest of us all is in no real danger but has still created a defence for herself by using reverse psychology on her parents. She watches for any group of three or more family members who may be sitting and chatting or working and when she finds such a group, she walks up to them and starts talking about her marriage in that way, which is very deliberately indiscreet but makes the listener feel the speaker is trying unsuccessfully to be subtle. The family thinks they would not want her to think about marriage so early so they start talking about her education and career and thereby never bring up the topic of her marriage.
I am not sure what Monu's defense is but I am afraid my sister is in the line of fire. In a Suraj Bharjatya movie, I would have thrown myself in front of her and said "No, marry me. Leave her, let her live. She is still so young." In the real life, however, I have written I am afraid about her defenses and that, I feel is sufficient as far as sibling-concern goes.
I have devised a simple, three-step routine, which is fool-proof: Agree, Distract, Exit.
Here is how it works:
Step 1- Agree: When sat down by the family for “the talk” (now I wish it was about the birds and bees, really!), plaster a melancholy, ironic expression on your face and start nodding solemnly, as if you totally agree with what is being said about age and life partner and support and blah blah blah.
Step 2- Distract: Such conversations will inevitably lead you to the opening themselves. Wait until the gyaan is over and they say “What do you think?” or a string of words that betrays the same sentiment. Here you know it is time for step 2. You laugh softly and briefly- almost a cross between a sigh and laugh really- to betray irony and a hint of bitterness. Then you start talking about your diabetes and how that scares you and how you feel you will not live long enough (insert sobs here) and you don’t want to burden somebody with this heavy weight of what is almost a sword hanging on your head (insert a steady trickle of tears here) and you so want to work and be independent but you are so scared about your eyes being damaged (insert hysterical theatrics here) or your legs being amputated.
Step 3- Exit: Somewhere during this torrent, the family members will get up and come to you to console you about your tragedies and assure you that there will be so many nice boys in your “community” (by which they mean diabetic boys) and that you should not lose hope about your life, which is going to be long and happy. You do not let them finish their consolation and get up in the middle of their honeyed words to say you are too upset to talk about this and walk off.
PS- If you are not diabetic or blessed with a chronic condition that puts you off the conventional marriage market, I can only say: tough luck!
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