Shadi Ka Laddoo

 The world rejoices when a child is born and mourns when a person dies, in both the cases the person concerned is oblivious to the happenings. In the case of marriages, people celebrate, so do the bride and groom, once again oblivious of the consequences. Most normal people decide to tie the knot at least once, barring of course Bhishma Pitamah and Salman Bhai. Then there are brave dare devils who sometimes indulge themselves more than once, ignoring the adage, ‘once bitten twice shy’! Elizabeth Taylor, probably hold a record of sorts for walking the aisle on eight occasions, twice with the same person. Though for the records it was Mr Glynn Wolfe who did it 31 times and holds the Guinness Record for most monogamous marriages. Islam as a religion permits a man to marry four wives, may be that is the genesis of the all the troubles. After all if you have four such occasions looming large may be you would be prepared to be a fedayeen.

As they say in Hindi, “Shadi ka laddoo, jo khaye wo pachhtaye, jo na khaye wo bhi pachhtaye”, translated as “Damned if you marry or damned if you don’t either ways”. Why these marital blues all of a sudden, after more than three decades of martial bliss, the marital has purposely been spelt as martial. The position of the all powerful “I” makes no difference really, as both are essential martial in nature, just the adversary changes from outside to within the four walls. This slight of hand or spellings is just to confuse you. Well actually it was about time for my son to take the plunge, after three decades of bliss, time to atone for the sins had finally arrived. The interesting part was it was of his own volition, so we happily let him do it. After all it is better to experience it, even Socrates said, “By all means get married, if you get a good wife, you will be happy If you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher!” 

Be that as it may, all of us were overjoyed when our son, Abhijat decided to tie the nuptial knot with Ishita. He has been happy and blissful for three decades of his existence on this planet, travelling and exploring the world; he was prepared to embark on yet another adventurous trip for the rest of his life.

A veteran of organising many events, Raising Days, Reunions, I was confident I will be able to handle this little marriage business in a similar fashion. Little did we know that organising a marriage is a different cup of tea altogether. Here you are the commander, the staff, and the troops who has to plan, manage the finances, deal with the hoteliers, negotiate with your own family on budgetary constraints and then set about  preparing the guest list and finally execute it. Preparing the Guest List was a tough one as to whom to include and whom to exclude, after all, in the forty four years since I left home to join RIMC, one has made friends with hundreds, all course mates, RIMC,NDA,IMA, Young Officers course,Degree Engineering, Staff College, Higher Command, neighbours, colleagues. The guest list obviously has to include friends of my better half, kids, parents and siblings. After stepping on some toes and even at the cost of annoying a few, we decided to go public with this auspicious news and posted it on all the whats app groups that one was a member of. The choice of the venue for the wedding was a difficult one as the bride’s side had to be convinced that despite our current place of residence being Delhi, we had to perform the ceremonies at Indore, where our parents and the extended family resided. A marriage without the blessing of the elders in India is just another party. They very graciously agreed and after the event, they were convinced seeing the enthusiastic participation by the elders in the family.

Finally almost hundred out station guests graced the occasion, with Rimcollian and NDA buddies topping the list, in fact my friends were present in larger numbers than Abhijat’s friends.  As though in a show of solidarity, they wanted to make sure that there was adequate support at hand. A fact that I can be justifiably proud of. Although Abhijat’s guests included his friends from France, where he spent about a year and a half pursuing his research in Computer Science. They participated in all the activities very enthusiastically and were with us for a full week.

The marriage was solemnised in a befitting manner with the chanting of mantras, the bride and grooms shook hands as part of the “Lagna”, followed by the saptpadi, the proverbial seven steps of commitment for a lifelong companionship and kanyadaan, an act which has no parallels in any other culture where the bride’s father gives away the girl to the groom and is considered the epitome of charitable acts! 

After all the backslapping and merrymaking we discovered that we had been anointed as “In Laws” . In Laws, much maligned by Hindi movies,  by their very stature and acts are supposed to be obnoxious people who indulge in poking their nose in the affairs of the couple and making lives of the bride specially miserable. We would like to be the outliers then….be just parents!!!