The Big Fat Indian Wedding!

So, I am back , the wedding is done with and bidai khatam!!! Let us move chapterwise here!!

Chapter One : The Evening of the wedding!

The drama began at around 2 in the afternoon yesterday when the bride’s barat reached my city and from that point on , being the only family essentially from this city we had a lot of work to do!

Bhai spent majority of his time driving around people [ a la the myth during his cousin’s wedding :) ] and I would at times catch a glimpse of him, sweating like anything in the horrid heat , shouting instructions at some random person.
Anyways…we [S, the bride to be and I ] had to reach the beauty parlor at 5 sharp and by 6 we were still at home , managing stuff! That got us into the panic mode big time, so by 6:15 we somehow namanged to reach the parlour. On reaching there, I realized that I did not have a matching petticoat for my sari!!!!! [The petticoat continuies to create problems for us as a family also!] It was 6:30 by the time the realization dawned upon me and tht got me into a super panic mode . So I grabbed the arm of Megha, a friend of S and we hailed for a rick and headed for an unknown market place to get the elusive blue petticoat.
Having never gone to that market made things a bit difficult as it is , plus it was getting late and dark, the last I had eaten was I dunno when and I was getting extremely panicky.

We stopped at this dingy shop which hopefully stocked petticoats, and I handed the blouse to the shopkeeper. He immediately told me that he did not have the same colour .But on seeing my crestfallen face he actually offered to run around the market to look for one !

So, there Megha and I munched on somethings from a shop nearby while she told me her love story [ she is getting married to her guy this November ] while the nice shopkeeper got me the petticoat!
Virtual ‘muah’ for the random stranger who helped me out. *blush*

So, then as soon as we reached the parlor , I got down to wearing my saree for the day, I had loads of hands to help me , one aunty helped me wrap my saree, another did my make up [ which was too dark for my simple tastes, so I washed it all off as soon as I got home and re applied light makeup, and yess btw! The lady at the saloon has sent me a nice 600 rupees ka bill for the makeup.huh! ] and so I was ready by 8:30, by 9 we all reached the venue for the wedding.

Chapter Two: The gathering!

This wedding was a khumbh mela of sorts! Relatives who had not met each other for like a century were squealing with delight on spotting some long lost cousin/whatever . The sheer number of relatives was mind boggling!!There were so many of them!!!I was on my feet non stop attending to the guests, managing my sister on stage, receiving the guests, saying the farewells..etc etc

I have never been hugged /kissed sooooooo many times in such a short span of time [ got loads of compliments as well *blush* ]. It is funny how now with a MBA degree in sight I am considered to be highly qualified, its funny coz from the circle I come from I have in my vicinity people heading who are heading off to A , so my meager lil college does not seem good enough, and here amongst people in general things are so different.



Us taking centre stage even before the bride and the groom arrived! Moi in the blue and green saree with cousins!

Chapter Three : The Jaymal

So we began the coy , shy , walk with the bride , with the jaymaal in her hand. We were a couple of cousins and bhabhiz walking beside S . I am actually quite good at the shy coy bride thing or so I have been told. Imagine!
The strong light of the cameras and the instructions barked out by the cameramen ?
Shee shee

Okay , now finally we reached the stage and the boy and the girl both stood facing each other when the ladake waaleyz began their traditional drama!
R wouldn’t bend his head down and S was not tall enough to manage the jaymal unless the high and mighty groom deigned to bend his oversized head!S tried to reach for him a couple of times. On seeing S try, the ladaka waalaz lifted R so that he was now totally out of reach.!!!

Bleddy ladaka waalaz!
But we girls were also very smart!

We were like, sure go ahead, kab tak 70 kilo ke aadami koh kandhe parr uthaye rahoge, We decided that we would wait for the ladaka walaz to put down their precious 70 kilograms of human flesh! [ yess, that’s exactly what one of my cousins said to the groom’s elder brother! ].

So we stood their waiting for some time amidst loads of shor sharaba!
By that time one Mama stealithily made his way to the stage and before we knew it, he lifted S high up!!!

R was so totally taken aback , and we were like ‘ Cummmon S mala daalo!!!!’ S is my sister and like any intelligent female she does not let an opportunity slip by, so hoisted a couple of feet up the ground inspite of being dressed in all that bridal finery [ which can switch off any body’s brain functioning, trust me!]she immediately flung the jaymal around R’s neck! .So the jaymal happened when both the boy and girl were about 4 feet above stage level!!

This unexpected turn of events brought maxxxxx taaliz and whistles from amongst the crowd!



Just before the ladake waaleyz started their drama, the bridde and the groom!
Chapter Four : The actual wedding and the cheaters!.

So at around one the wedding began. Almost the entire family stayed up including me !And it was such ossum fun! Most of us cousins had changed from sarees to salwar kurtas for the sake of convenience by then. [ Being the eldest one , I was the undisputed leader of us all gundaz and all did my bidding! *superior luk* ] However our sooper high spirits were dampened a bit as soon as S enetered the mandap as she was already in tears and that made us get quite emotional as well.




S getting very emotional and moi trying to calm her down, my Nani looks on and the errr...cooler.

The joota churai is an art. It requires careful planning followed with a meticulous execution of the plan. The ladake waale cheaters cheated their way to glory, the moment R [the groom ] got off the stage , bingo!! No jootez on his feet!!!
Imagine!

And then they sit and taunt us!

So, well, we kind of searched for the jootez and then when we really could not find them we started doing a bit of jasoosi!

First and foremost we spoke with the ladake waaley ke side ka head cheater [ that fellow has taken away ALL my CAT material! ] , then we followed their each and every move with care and we came to a shocking albeit correct conclusion!
They had chupaoed the jootez in their hotel, that was across the street!!!
Locked it in a room!!
Imagine!
Bleddy cheaters!

Ah, so well…R was wearing a pagadi on his head, I was standing next to him, I simply whisked away the pagadi while R was busy doing something to something as per the panditjee’s instructions You cannot imagine the halla the other cheaters made when they saw us pull off this coup!.
We refused to hand over the pagadi unless they told us where the jootez were.
At around the same time Mamaz got extra enthu and we started making up songs for the occasion.

Lyrics of some of them
“ mushkil mein hai banna,
pagadi ke binna!
Jootey ki lalach mein
Pagadi hi lutai|”

Heheh..it was funny you know, we made up load of songs, taunting them like anything.
However there was this cap kind of a thing which looked like a Christmas tree to me, so they placed it on R’s head and that acted like his pagadi.However we soon got bored and after announcing that afterall R is our ‘jeeja ji’, and we cannot bear to see him pareshaan and all that ,I placed the pagadi back on R’s head amidst thunderous applause form the grooms side!

During the wedding we put digi cams to good use by clicking pictures of any barati found sleeping..the moment our cameras would point to the sleeping , unsuspecting barati, the other bleddy cheaters would get ultra alert and start poking and jabbing the poor guy real bad and would generally wake them up before we would really click the snap!

Lots of dholak pitana happened all throughout the night, we made up many many songs and outdid the ladake waaleyz when it came to originality and creativity!
Huh!
*Superior look*

All throughout the night elders would point out stuff and tell me to observe the proceedings carefully as I would presumably be the next one sitting in a mandap. One month ago, this would scared me like hell..but now that I know that no shaadi waadi for the next 2 years, I took it all in my stride.

At about 4 one of the boys from the other side , brought into the room a packet which looked suspiciously big , my cuuzn , being ultra smart that she obviously is, immediately pounced upon that and guess what we found inside that packet?????

Them bleddy jootez!!!!!!!!!!!!

The bhais spent the remaining part of the night closely guarding the jootez, most of the time by actually wearing them, and sauntering to the ladake waala side to simply piss them off!!

So, when at 5 the shaddi finally ended, and R and S had to be led away from the Mandap, we all surrounded the groom and refused to budge till we were give a decent amount of money!
After many rounds of ‘yaar pachchas each mein mann jao, achcha sau each parr man jao” we finally settled on one thousand each!!!!

It was it guess a decent performance from all of us.
Good work, team!

*pat on the back!*

There were more things to be done including my having to touch R’s shoulders knees and forehead with rice 10 times with rice in my hands!
How weird was that!
We also played some games with R and S which were a lot of fun!

Post that I had to come back home to manage kaam dhaam here and hence I missed the vidai, which in a way was a good thing!
Infact today has been sooo busy that I cannot put it in words here, I have been on my feet the whole day busy managing innumerable things at the same time!
:|
This is actually the first one hour that I have manged to steal and it is almost one o clock at night!

With that the wedding comes to an end , I have my exams in a fortnight and now I need to go back to padhai!!