Of wedding cards and their envelope-stickers

I am obviously not keeping my promise of the 30-day countdown. But in my defense, the bride and her folks finish work only after midnight, be it shopping or lists and after the customary gossip-session that follows the end-of-work everyday, I cannot bring myself to start writing.

Since the last update, we have been crazy busy. After the wedding invitation-task was completed, we were waiting for चाचा to get the stickers for the envelopes. The stickers were to have the name of each guest we are inviting, the residential address and the golden words "with family" on them.

Obviously, he forgot about the stickers.

So when he was reminded by an understandably hyperventilating चाची about the sample sheet of these stickers about one hour before he had promised to hand them over to her, he sat down with a page torn out of one of our old, school-notebooks, made a list of about 15 of his friends and acquaintances, gave it to one very nice man who adores चाचा for reasons we do not know nor care to find out and who runs a printing business here and came back two hours later with the promised sheet of sample stickers.

Obviously, it was a disaster. For one, there was only Mr. XYZ. No "with Mrs." No "with family". Several names were like this:

Mr. Jaggi
Mr. Pappu
Mr. C.V.
(These were friends of Chacha's whose actual name he did not bother to write)

Obviously, चाची was uncontrollable in her wrath. So starting THAT VERY POINT all of us sat down and began making a list of the invitees, and as a sign of his repentance, चाचा made me type "Mrs. and Mr. XYZ, with family".

Obviously we chatted more than we worked. The task was not one to take 2 days but with every name that was mentioned, there accompanied- on an average- 10 minutes of gossip about the person concerned, including but not limited to mimicking, sarcastic comments, गिल्ले and rarely a good word.

Here are a few photos from one of the days:


One part work...


... and one part gossip!


Yours truly, typing diligently. I have not cropped my face. My mother, who took these pictures probably thought my face was not fit to be included in the frame! [hmmphh]

PS- The girl hiding her face in the pictures is my little sister Soma who has a massive phobia of cameras and like all teenage girls, thinks she is the ugliest duckling around.