Simply Me
Friday, December 16, 2011
Love is in the air
With the 100 days between our engagement and wedding, I tried to find out love stories about some of our near and dear ones... While in a love-cum-arranged marriage, the questions are... Who proposed, how did he/she propose and so on, in an arranged marriage, the love part of it generally happens after the engagement and the the period between the engagement and the wedding is a time when the guy and girl try their best to meet each other or find some way or the other of communicating to each other...
With amma and annu, the engagement lasted a 100 days as well... At a time when meeting each other was close to impossible and no internet (yeah yeah, the dark ages) and amma in Mangalore and annu in Pune (this distance takes 15 hours by bus in this year and date, so meeting was definitely not a possibility), they exchanged daily letters or cards... The cards were pretty and sweet, amma tells me (like she would show me any of those) and she has preserved them, she says.
When I was talking to Geetakka and Ganesh maam on the phone, both of them on different extensions at their house, I told them about annu and amma exchanging letters. Ganesh maam tells me, they had done the same during their engagement period, but, with a difference... Suddenly, I could hear giggling on Geetakka's end of the phone. They were both in different cities. Ganesh maamu had been working with a bank and while they exchanged daily letters, with the year end at the bank, maamu was more than a little bogged down with the amount of work... After being unable to write for a week, Ganesh maamu was surprised by a letter from his fiance's father one day... Of course, the surprise was nothing compared to the shock at the wordings in the letter... Ajju had written a severe reprimand to him asking him why he hadn't written to Geetakka for so many days... Ajju's poor daughter was in tears at not having received any letter, worried to death about Ganeshmaamu's health... Needless to say, Ganeshmaamu was quick to reply to the letter and write without fail since...
These topics of course led to our conversation on the dining table yesterday where Vasanth mhanthu and Vidya mhava looked at each other with smiles on their faces. Mhanthu was then posted in Delhi and mhava was in Cochin... With the 3 hour wait for placing trunk calls, they were quite lucky that STD calls were being introduced on a trial basis to and from Delhi to different cities of India... Needless to say, mhave's father was quite annoyed with the telephone bills but the fact of the matter was mhanthu and mhava were definitely not bothered by that... Mhanthu then quietly said, he'd send mhava gifts as and when possible.. One was a red saree... with which he sent a letter; but he was definitely in a quandary when he decided to send her a red VIP bag... what does he write now? He expanded the letters VIP for her.... What he said... Lets see who can find out...
Vatsalakka and Shinnamaam's wedding was a little different... Vatsalakka's parents informed her that she was going to get married to Shinnamaam a week hence. So the first time they met was at the wedding!!!
Rekha mavshi and Manali mavshi had been laughing when we asked them. Manali mavshi and Deepak kaka were both in Mumbai and they would meet as often as possible at the station. Her boss was used to losing his secretary at lunch time... Rekha mavshi on the other hand... Kaka had some work in the same town and had been staying in the same house as Rekha mavshi with her family... so much so that people actually thought he was one of the dozen kids of the house. While this had the advantage of there being not the heartache of not seeing each other, the obvious problem was he had gotten to know all her tantrums.
Luckily for R and me, we had the best of all communication media... phone calls, SMS, skype and between the time we first met and our wedding, he came to visit me about 4 times in Pune - once being a surprise visit for my birthday :)
While I started this post before the wedding, the engagement is now over and I now get to see my hubby, Raghavendra, daily... life is definitely sweet :)
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Wedding bells...
So today, 16 days to the wedding, while I sit at home with huge piles of clothes towering all around me on my bed and on the floor, I decided to write about 'him.'
My fiancé, Raghavendra, is just the sort of guy I was looking for - the exact opposite of me. I keep saying, when God made him, all the qualities He had left in the other box went into making me... He is sensible... I am a nut-case; I am a chatterbox... he will listen to every nonsensical comment of mine; he is a romantic... I am... well... clueless; I love to read... he has promised all my books are going to gather dust sitting in the book shelf he is going to buy for me 'cause he says he wants me to give him company in not-reading!!! In another life, I would have probably been a psycho-rocker... he keeps me grounded...
The question my school friends started with was... 'Tell us everything... Start right at the beginning.' So I did...
Teen saal pehle ki baat hai... (They go: Teen saal???!!!), amma decided to start looking for a prospective groom for me. (Oh accha, wahaan se start kar rahi tu...)... So I continued, saying, we met in Bangalore at my mhanthu's (my dad's older brother's) home. We had a very practical discussion about the typical must-have questions... job, friends and jealousies, clothes - restrictions, how religious is his family, how family oriented everyone is. We moved on to things like hobbies, friends, general stuff... We met up again the next day - Friendship Day. I said I needed time to think and probably talk to him a bit more before coming to a decision. We had received a 'Yes' from his side that morning.
Monday morning, we took a flight back to Pune. My cell pinged with a message as soon as I turned it on... Hope you reached safely... I replied, Yes, reached Pune. Could I call you later around 11 P.M. after I get back from office? He said, 'Sure.'
I called him up at night. We said hi to each other... Then I said, 'Actually, the reason I wanted to talk was to say - Yes.' His reply - OK. You are not saying that because you are being pressurized by your family, are you? I am like!!!??? Ye kaisa reply hai? 'No, I thought about it and came to the decision. How about you? You aren't being pressurized by your family, right?' (I mean, no excitement, no pressure na... itna practical question??? :( Gharwaalon ne to nahi haan bulwaaya usse) 'No-no, nothing like that.' We spoke for a while more and then cut the call.
What I missed telling them was, since then, I have already teased him endlessly about the lack of emotion when I said yes. And he has since told me that that monday was the worst of life in between the time he read my message and I gave my assent. He said he couldn't concentrate on his work and worried incessantly about what I would say. I said, ‘Of course, what else could I say? You ticked all the check boxes in my list of what I wanted...’
Since that first time we met, I have visited Bangalore, he has visited me in Pune, we have each surprised the other on birthdays, we have gotten engaged, we have fallen in love... (though he claims he fell in love with me after talking to me the very first time).
What I didn't tell my friends was R and I were probably destined to be together from a long time. We had been sent each others' horoscopes 3 years ago - right at the beginning of our respective searches but while according to their pandit, our horoscopes matched, not according to our pandit. 3 years down the line and after receiving his horoscope about 5 times from different sources, my mamama ( amma's mum) finally said, 'You know what, lets check again.' Well, needless to say, the rest is history. This time the horoscopes matched and quite well I might add. Apparently, relative positions of the stars makes a difference from time to time... Ohhhh...kkkkay.
Whichever way I look at it though I'd say smart catch on the horoscopes. So as we soon embark on a new journey, we both keep our minds positive about the future and look forward to writing a new chapter of our lives - this time together.
P.S. Archana was wondering if I have known R for 3 years... so maybe my post is confusing... We met august of this year... 2011... So amma of course keeps teasing me... Yeah yeah, and before you used to say... 6 months of engagement... Now from the time you first met him to the wedding, just over 4 months... What changed?
Labels: Band Baajaa Baraat, Yaadein reh jaati hain..., Yaaron Dosti badi hi haseen hai...
