2 States… From Romance to Wedding

My white coat romance which had started in the hospital wards, had now shifted it’s venue to my home. We were slowly heading towards marriage. My parents had given the green signal. Though I am their only daughter, I am blessed with a huge family of loving uncles & aunts & wonderful cousins, who shower their love and affection on me as I am the youngest of the lot. (My mother is the youngest of 9 siblings) So everyone was concerned for me, and they all came to meet and interview Ajay to see if he was fit enough for the esteemed post of being my life partner. 😎😎 Ajay was unfazed by all this attention, and continued to charm everyone as he had charmed my parents. Everyone was so under his spell that no one had any doubts about him anymore. 

Ajay declared to his parents that he had found his girl, and sent them the train tickets from Kerala to Bihar. Then my prospective in-laws  came all the way from Bihar to meet me. 

The initial meeting was not a big success 😅 language barriers, societal customs, communication gaps created misunderstandings due to which my parents felt apprehensive, and were almost on the verge of changing the green signal to red. But trust Ajay to solve all problems. He had made up his mind, and there was no going back. So after a few rounds of talks, all issues were sorted out, and our wedding was fixed on 26th of December 2007.

So just after one year of meeting, here we were, ready to tie the knot, and with today it’s going to be 14 completed years of happy togetherness. You see it’s our wedding Anniversary tomorrow. ☺️☺️

The Bride was from Kerala, The Bridegroom from Bihar, and the wedding was in Karnataka 😁😁… (We could very well be appointed as Ambassadors for National integration 🙈🙈) That’s because my whole family is in Karnataka (To make a long story short…my ancestors from Goa migrated to Karnataka at the time of Portuguese Colonisation to escape convertion to Christianity, and from Karnataka my parents migrated to Kerala for job opportunities ) So anyway, the wedding was to be in Karnataka.☺️

Our wedding was a combo of a South Indian and North Indian wedding to please both families. So finally we had two sets of happy parents, lots of happy guests after a wonderful feast, and a very happy couple eager to embark on the journey of life.☺️☺️

After a few days, I went on my first trip to Bihar to meet Ajay’s family. They were quite surprised to see me. (Well, you see the typical south Indian is expected to be very dark, and speaks quite nasty Hindi) Anyway, I just happened to be better than their expectations. 😅😅

But Bihari customs were quite strange for me. A South Indian is quite unused to a “ghoonghat” but now I was expected to the demure bride hiding behind a ghoonghat playing hide and seek whenever an elder male family member happened to cross my path. And I was strictly forbidden from going near my husband’s mamaji (He would be forced to take bath in Ganga and drink “गौ मूत्र” if I happen to touch him) And ladies there were on a perpetual fasting spree. Monday was “Somwar” ka fast, Tuesday was “Mangalwar” ka fast, and then there would be Ekaadashi…and what not. My experience in fasting was strictly confined to fasting in between meals, and probably the longest duration I had fasted was 10 Hours ( between dinner and breakfast 😁😁) 

But luckily, nobody has had too many expectations out of me. Maybe that is one of the perks of a love marriage, people don’t expect too much out of you!!

My in-laws have always given me complete freedom to be who I am, and have treated me like their own daughter. So even though they fast, they make sure that I get my meals on time. 😃 They never insist on ghunghat, or impose any restrictions on me. It’s been a beautiful journey, these 14 years…☺️