A wedding and a love story
October 17, 2006I have returned from a wedding this morning. In spite of it making my weekend too hectic it has left me with a smile on my face. And the reasons are multiple.
The groom is my cousin, ex-roomie, friend and a wonderfully calm and composed human being. He also gives me tough competition in the laziness department, and in-fact he’s the only person in the world so far who has beat me into it a few times. The fact that he got married to the love of his life, makes me feel happier for him.
Weddings (specially weddings in our family) are a noisy affair, because of the collective craziness of our entire khaandaan. Typically maharashtrian weddings are very simple and lack any kind of show off. It’s only the hysterically loud laughter that our grand family makes, which makes it an interesting affair. This time there was an added zing to the wedding because the Bride comes from an Assamese family, so it was an interesting mixture of Assamese and Marathi wedding. The baraat was received in a Assamese way, with the typical holy sounds they make from mouth. Not surprisingly very soon our entire family was found practicing to make that sound. Minutes later when the bride and groom were on the stage for wedding rituals, the groom wore the conical Assamese topi while the marathi mangalashtaks were being sung.
The event also provided an opportunity to the relatives for filling my mom’s brain with unwanted thoughts. They had some kind of wicked pleasure in poking their elbows in my ribs and asking, ’so when are you gettin married?’ and when i made bad faces, they went on quizzing ‘is there someone?’… AAARRRGGHHHH
but the best moment of shaadi was when a very beautiful cutie with a golu-molu face walked up to to me with hesitation in her beautiful eyes, and after standing in front of me for few mysterious seconds simply said ‘I love you‘.
It was such a lovely moment and it caught me so unprepared that I automatically responded ‘I love you too’. I wasn’t even finished admiring that look in her wide blue eyes, and she just ran away giggling while her other friends who were observing all this from a li’l distance ran behind her. It took me a while to realize that I din’t even know her name. So i went out, bought a chocolate and came back searching for her at the wedding venue. She was there, sitting pretty with her friends, chit chatting. Without giving it a second thought, i jumped right in between their conversation, saying ‘hey! girlfriend, you dint tell me your name?’ Her face changed colors due to the blushing, she said with her eyes buried deep down into the floor, ‘Shivani’.
‘So Shivani,’ i continued, ‘here is a small gift to begin our love story’. I presented her the chocolate bar and moved on to another room, I heard girlie screams by her friends behind my back even as I left. Within few seconds she came in running into the room, screaming with joy, ‘Mommy, see Amit gave me a chocolate because he loves me too.’
I was shocked to realize that her mom was in the same room where I was. I hesitantly looked at her mom, who was already looking at me - our eyes locked each other and then we both laughed. So did everyone else in the room, only my new 10 yr old girlfriend did not understand what the laud laughter was all about.
Innocence.
:-)
