When are you getting married?’, asks the literally rounded aunty draped in a saree that shines 10 times that of Iron Man’s body suit. And while I try to calculate the reflection coefficient of her dress, an involuntary smile flashes across my face while my eyes try to scan the mithai (sweet) box kept on the table. She is in no mood to let me go. She speaks as if her voice just took a dip in a bottle of mango juice (alphanso, mind it) and her tone grows silky soft as the best skin crème available. I dread this.
While I try to save myself and use my smartphone as a shield to escape her Heath Ledger smile, she snatches it and asks me to show the pictures I have. She calls my mom, sarcastically announcing that the next half an hour should be spent by all the elders in the family scrolling through the pictures of my phone, because 'you know, kids these days!’ And I ask myself, ‘Who in the world invented sarcasm?’ He would be cringing in his grave, because right now all my family surrounds me for the announced show. I mumble to myself ‘Showtime, baby!’ and remark loudly ‘Lets get a projector too. That would enable easy viewing’. And again I ask myself, ‘ Who in the world invented sarcasm?’ because my over enthusiastic uncle gets one in fifteen minutes. I pray for the soul of the sarcasm inventor.
While I am not sure if my prayers are being heard, in order to raise the happiness index of the gathering, a happily-married-friend-who-is-a-mother- of-a-two-year-old-kid turns up. Her happiness seeps to the faces of all the aunts and they sound in unison ‘for a girl, the amount of happiness that comes after marriage is beyond measurement.’ I wish the inventor of kilogram scale had thought of such intangibles too. Now while the projector has been set up and I have gotten a narrow escape from the milieu by playing their favorite Bollywood songs on Youtube, and I have already silently thanked Yash Chopra (?) and Steve Chen, I stealthily move out of the room. And there I am intercepted by another happily married friend. I ask myself ‘Who in the world came up with the idea of family gatherings?’ In our country, family gatherings are like a village feast. And this married friend gives me the good advice of finding a good groom at the right age because, ‘you know, its so tough these days!’ My central and lateral incisors request me to put off their incessant showcasing as a response to all of these questions but there is no respite for them.
Suddenly there are more people in the house. There is more food and more music but there are no more girls of marriageable age. And while everyone is suggesting names of good successful prospective grooms to my mom and dad, I concentrate on the laddoos. After everyone has had their food and I have dropped two scores down on the favoritism index of my aunt whose proposal to marry an IT programmer has met with an outright rejection from me, I get up to take their leave. My mother does her classic angry eyes at me for my act. At this moment if I focused her eyesight through a magnifying glass, it could have burnt down anything placed beneath it. My mother soothes my aunt by thanking her profusely and saying,’you know, girls these days!’ Thankfully, the wedding song playlist gets over and everyone gets up for goodbyes.
And yes everyone promises me to make it to my wedding come what may, because, ‘you know, everyone is important!’. My mother does her classic sad-mother-of-a-pesky-girl face during all the sad goodbyes and promises to invite everyone and everyone of everyone to my would-be wedding. I smile and mumble to myself, ‘Who in the world invented the idea of getting married in a public ceremony to be attended by scores of people you have never known and shall never know for all practical purposes?’.
While I try to save myself and use my smartphone as a shield to escape her Heath Ledger smile, she snatches it and asks me to show the pictures I have. She calls my mom, sarcastically announcing that the next half an hour should be spent by all the elders in the family scrolling through the pictures of my phone, because 'you know, kids these days!’ And I ask myself, ‘Who in the world invented sarcasm?’ He would be cringing in his grave, because right now all my family surrounds me for the announced show. I mumble to myself ‘Showtime, baby!’ and remark loudly ‘Lets get a projector too. That would enable easy viewing’. And again I ask myself, ‘ Who in the world invented sarcasm?’ because my over enthusiastic uncle gets one in fifteen minutes. I pray for the soul of the sarcasm inventor.
While I am not sure if my prayers are being heard, in order to raise the happiness index of the gathering, a happily-married-friend-who-is-a-mother- of-a-two-year-old-kid turns up. Her happiness seeps to the faces of all the aunts and they sound in unison ‘for a girl, the amount of happiness that comes after marriage is beyond measurement.’ I wish the inventor of kilogram scale had thought of such intangibles too. Now while the projector has been set up and I have gotten a narrow escape from the milieu by playing their favorite Bollywood songs on Youtube, and I have already silently thanked Yash Chopra (?) and Steve Chen, I stealthily move out of the room. And there I am intercepted by another happily married friend. I ask myself ‘Who in the world came up with the idea of family gatherings?’ In our country, family gatherings are like a village feast. And this married friend gives me the good advice of finding a good groom at the right age because, ‘you know, its so tough these days!’ My central and lateral incisors request me to put off their incessant showcasing as a response to all of these questions but there is no respite for them.
Suddenly there are more people in the house. There is more food and more music but there are no more girls of marriageable age. And while everyone is suggesting names of good successful prospective grooms to my mom and dad, I concentrate on the laddoos. After everyone has had their food and I have dropped two scores down on the favoritism index of my aunt whose proposal to marry an IT programmer has met with an outright rejection from me, I get up to take their leave. My mother does her classic angry eyes at me for my act. At this moment if I focused her eyesight through a magnifying glass, it could have burnt down anything placed beneath it. My mother soothes my aunt by thanking her profusely and saying,’you know, girls these days!’ Thankfully, the wedding song playlist gets over and everyone gets up for goodbyes.
And yes everyone promises me to make it to my wedding come what may, because, ‘you know, everyone is important!’. My mother does her classic sad-mother-of-a-pesky-girl face during all the sad goodbyes and promises to invite everyone and everyone of everyone to my would-be wedding. I smile and mumble to myself, ‘Who in the world invented the idea of getting married in a public ceremony to be attended by scores of people you have never known and shall never know for all practical purposes?’.
