After having completed his recondite ruminations in the shower, Free Labour Man set out to fulfil his noble mission in life, hopeful that today would be the day he would get to carry the umbrella and lead the procession of half naked uncles. That, apart from carrying boxes, bags and octogenarians to and fro.
I finally wound my way down to where the ceremonies were taking place. It was still only five in the a.m. and things were in full swing. The trouble with waking up early us T.Bs in the motherland do, is that six hours into the day when you cast a bored look on your watch, you're horrified to find that the clock has just struck ten. Compare this to my day at home in Delhi when six hours into my day, the sun has already set. For my views on marriage, I must refer you to paragraphs 10-15 of the following article:
It was with these thoughts, then that I sat there, brooding, and waiting to be drafted into the wedding work force. The draft came, then came breakfast, the umbrella and the procession of the aforementioned uncles came and passed as I looked on in horror (my noble mission would only be half complete now), then came lunch, and the evening tea, but the ceremonies refused to end. An interesting, albeit masochistic twist was added to the tale by the fact that both bride and groom were forbidden from eating anything (religion, being the most handy excuse for us T.Bs) till everything was done and over. It wasn't until half past eight that the proceedings had ground to a halt. There it was, a full fledged sixteen hour long wedding. In this time I had woken up, ruminated in the shower, sat bored for 5 hours, watched the procession in horror, had some four meals, napped for three hours and also managed to take a small tour of the temple town. All this while the poor bride and groom sat there, waiting for the torture to end on empty stomachs and short fuses. My brother (the groom) very aptly described their condition at the end of the ceremony as PhDs - Phate Haal Dampattis (literally, Torn Condition Couple).
At the end of it all, the priest was kind enough to hand my brother a little chit before he left with some mantra written on it (probably as home work). The hopeful of course titled this little chit the Libido Mantra.
Things soon wound down to a close and everyone settled into their respective rooms, one trying to memorize the Libido Mantra, leaving me alone to ponder yet again. This time the pondering produced something more than the humidity and hard water paradox. It produced a slogan. A slogan that would probably define every single Indian marriage that ever was held. A slogan which would have to be the centerpiece of any ad we create to market an Indian wedding:
"Brevity is not our priority"
True story.
2 comments:
So basically you had fun :P
er...kind of ;P
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