THE WEDDING (continued)

The courtship
I was too overwhelmed the day they came home to see me. i felt like i was one of these hot air balloons, filled with light gas, floating away in space. I texted my man only the next day. Later on i would come to know that he was eagerly awaiting my call the very same day and when that didn’t happen, he had almost crossed me off his “potential brides” list!!!
I was at work, my man called, asked if i wanted to meet. I said yes. We met (of all the places ) at Shree Mithai (that was the closest “hangout” near my office).
Boy was i glad to finnnnaaallly find out he was not “mundhirikottai” types!!! What a relief. He was dressed rather cool. I thought in my mind “ i like i like”! i fell for his charm, good looks & sweet words. (his best weapons! Only later on will i learn how effective they are in turning me into a warm gooey willing flunky. LOL!!) we sat down to talk or rather i should say, we sat down and he talked!!!! Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah !! then there would be two minutes gap where i would talk. Oh what things i did that day to seem impressionable. I had read somewhere that when your out on a 1st date, you should order food which is simple to eat & it should be a small portion .you are supposed to chew and eat slowly. Imagine my plight, who wouldn’t wanna step into Shree Mithai & not want to eat everything! Not just eat but gobble it all down. I had to control all that, we ordered, get this 1 measly grilled sandwich which we split. My dreams of sloppy pani puri were not gonna be fulfilled. Anyways when i was walking back to the office, my “gudiding flash” gave me a very warm n gooey feeling which i interpreted as . maapillai selected!!! :D :D atleast i was wishing to pursue it further if not jump into marriage immediately.that was our 1st meeting outside.
Needless to say, that evening, after work, i went to Shree Mithai and gobbled all that i had lusted for that noon(yup! I had Pani puri also..note the also;)) & headed home with a happy tummy!!
Everyday after that day we met. I was getting to know him and like him. Days flew into weeks and by the end of a month we were engaged!!

The engagement
We were engaged on 30th of April. My engagement was a mini kalyanam. When asked how many of their relatives would attend, we were told that they were expecting 80 people. Yup , you read it right, 80!!!!! My man went off to theUK to complete his project. He flew down only on the D- Day.
My first introduction to the Bhuvaneswaram clan was when i walked onto the stage. A hush fell over the place, i had this insane urge to giggle in a high pitched voice. Thank god for prithi, reema and reshmi. They were by my side throughout the evening. When i sat down, all i wanted to say was “nooooo i don’t wanna know you all”! LOL!!!
On that day, God wanted to test how far i could persevere. He sent demons in the form of a photographer & videographer!! They would follow my every move. I felt like i was on reality tv! (have you guys seen Ed Tv?? I felt like i was ED)! They would follow me around saying “ madam indha side, madam konjam sirunga, madam chin down” ( now what the hell chin down meant, i don’t know, because however down my chin was, for them it jus had to be downnner)!!
At the end of it, i thought i could retire to my room and change (finally) but nope. They wanted to film my man and me having a cosy conversation in front of (picture this) some 20 people. The awkward silence during this melee was punctuated with raucous remarks from Pri which went something like “Come on Pavi, Don’t tell me your shy! We don’t know what shyness is remember”. You can see this awkward & extremely embarrassing “cozy conversation” even today in my engagement video. The buggers couldn’t let it go, they had to put it in!!
Our “ cosy conversation” was a fitting end to the evening. All of us went home happy. I was a lil buzzed, thanks to all the anxiousness & nervous tension. But yeah twas a great evening!
:) :) :) :)

THE WEDDING!!!!

Pre Marriage Hoopla!
There had been this whole hullabaloo about some astrologer saying I will get married before December 2009. My parents as ever took his a words a lil too seriously. And all that was spoken at home was marriage marriage marriage marriage marriage. Needless to say i buried myself in work and pretended to be nonchalant about the whole thing. One fine evening i come home and my grandma tells me to shake her hand. Now picture this, m back home, loong work day, hungry as hell and am just about ready to bite anybody who crosses me. Instead I muster some tolerance, walk up to her n shake hands, she says “ thatha sonna unnaku September kulla kalyanam aahidum!!!” That’s it a volcano erupts, I stalk away after some heavy duty screaming.
The above happened in December of 2008. By end of January 2009, I was kinda getting used to the whole thing. Of course I was not going to say yes to anybody, but I was okay with the whole process of “finding the groom!!”
Finding the One
After endless days of looking through many mannnny profiles, my mom and i gave up. It seemed like we knew every guy on Bharat Matrimony, we could play the matching game!! Match photo to profile, name to photo. That’s how thoroughly we had checked and the most amazing thing was that none of them clicked. Either the guy was bald or too old or just plain bad looking!! The ones that looked good were always the ones which had jadagams that just didn’t match!(My parents and me had become self taught astrologers by this time. We knew which kattam had to be where for basic matching to happen)!! N boy did i have a reallllllllllllllllllly different jadagam. Nothing worked out. Then as it happens many times in life, a ray of light, we finally made headway!! My father showed me this one profile of this guy who i thought was verrrry cute. We had this system, profiles with photo were 1st shown to me, if i okayed the photo, the matching process would begin. But the funny thing is i didn’t okay most photos because as i said earlier most of them were BOB (bald, old, bad looking). So when this photo was shown to me, i was quite relieved and frankly a lil bit excited. My dad was stumped, he couldn believe i had given him the okay to proceed with the whole matching stuff. He rushed to the astrologer and when he was gone i had one of those flashes ( you know, the ones which tell you what you have to do and what is right for you. I call them “guiding flashes” and somehow they are always there when something big is going to happen to you, good or bad.)
So my “guiding flash” told me that our jadagams will match for sure. Boy was i weirded out!!!!! my parents got back and i knew what they would say. Just like i knew, they told me it was a perfect match. Our “matching score” was 8 out of 10(WOO-HOO). My father spoke to his father and everybody was very excited. Then came the process of us sending my jadagam to them so that they could get it matched by their astrologers(You would think matching is a simple process :O). The next coupla days at home were those “sitting on the edge of your seat kinda days”. Everybody was uptight, likethe apocalypse was approaching. Finally the call came, the jadagams had matched, they were ready to come home and see me.

29th March
After a lot of this day, that day, today, tomorrow, they finally came home. I was inside when they arrived, my heart was going hub a dub dub dub dub dub dub dub!! It showed no signs of slowing down. My sister gave me a heart attack, saying the “boy” had a “shree” on his forehead. That’s it, ihad a panic attack, i felt the worlds closing in on me, i told everybody there was no way i was stepping out of the room(you see i thought he would be verrrry traditional). My chithi convinced me saying that he looked like a nice boy, seemed very innocent ( a statement which i now know is nowhere close to the truth :P innocent my A**). I walked out, was introduced to the family, i said a “Hi” to everybody ( the “Hi” will haunt me for a verrrrry loooong time to come. More on that later. Keep reading). We were ushered into a room so that we could talk alone ( HA HA, the room was facing the hall and all doors were open, if we spoke in a decibel that was greater than 3, the world could hear us!!!!!!!) such were the conditions under which we had to talk, we did the talking anyways or should i say he did the talking anyways! He jus went on and on and on (LOL). But it was nice as i couldn really string two words togther in a sentence, that’s how tense and shy i was (YES!!! I was shy, whether you believe it or not, i kow Prithi won’t believe it. More about her later) anyways you know how in movies there’s this overeager enthu relative of the boy who asks “enna pa ponnu puduchiruka????” that happened, yes it did!! Boy was i nervous, i wasn’t gonna pushed into taking a life altering decision on the basis of a half an hour’s talking! The boy, man whatever (now my husband) deftly turned the question over to me, smart man that he is! (the oversmartness is exactly what m learning to counter these past few months. Whew!! Is it difficult) i said “puduchiruku”(thinking i wasn’t saying yes to marriage, just yes to liking him)
Immediately calendars were brought out, dates were checked, my mom (THANK GOD!) things were going too fast and slowed everybody down. So they left saying dates will be decided over phone. We had exchanged numbers and from the next day would begin our courtship. More on all that later. Keep following this blog to find out how i got charmed, swept off my feet and tricked into marriage thus becoming a part of the feisty Bhuvaneswaram clan (LOL!!!!:D)

Cheers y’all!