Here I am..

...after 2 months yet again. Ain't I punctual? :)

There have been soooo many firsts in the last 2 months - the most special one being our first Wedding Anniversary. We survived each other for a year!! I know it might sound very VERY clichéd, but time does fly.Wasn't it just yesterday-when we were scouting for that perfect trousseau?

A week before the anniversary, the brother and I had this loooooonnng conversation digging up every little thing we could recollect during the hectic week of the wedding ; the same-time-last-year waale incidents .We quarreled nonstop for close to 2 hours on the phone trying to make up for the lack of physical proximity required for a good clawing and scourging out of eyes. This is our way of showing how much we love and miss each other - weird but thats how it is.

He was the official scape goat during the wedding- anything and everything that had a remote possibilty of going wrong was promptly blamed on him. Ours is a nuclear family living in the south for a good 20 years.Our well meaning relatives couldnt do too much during the wedding since they did not understand a word of Tamil. So, this meant the parents, younger bro and sis handling the entire event management-with the icing on the cake being papa not speaking decent Tamil either! Every time I tried to intervene/help out, I was given this ' Scoot! You are the bride!' line and I watched my lovely family stretching themselves trying to make my wedding as special as they could.

A wedding with >2000 guests, between a Maharashtrian and a Telegu family held in Tamil/Kannada speaking place is no joke. It is a multilingual chaos with most people communicating in weird sign languages. English/Hindi did help quite a bit, but not enough when it came to ground management.

I had wanted a quiet wedding with close family/friends in my favorite temple up the hill overlooking lush green fields and a river below. If you live in Bangalore and feel like a nice weekend drive, do take the NH7 towards Chennai and abt 7 kms past Hosur, you will see this temple up on a hill about 500 metres to your right. Its not the diety nor any religious preferences, its just the serene tranquility of the place. SIGH! Ok, no digression-Yeah, the wedding. Considering K's entire family base for upto 3 generation upwards lives in the Bangalore area,there was no chance of a small wedding. It had to be BIG and how!!

So we had this groom in his traditional attire all complete with a turban and sash, a Maharashtrian bride with 'nath' and the likes and THREE bleddy wedding ceremonies. An Aryasamaji one (which K and I so badly wanted) followed by Maharashtrian and Telegu rituals. By the end of which K and I were so exhausted that I forgot to do all the filmy drama which I had intended to do when the knot was tied. Before I knew, the priest got hyper , some aunties got excited, hands came in between K and I and flurry flurry and people were congratulating us. I saw some fav friends of mine smiling at me and mouthing some affectionate words from somewhere down the aisle and I suddenly wanted to sit with them and indulge in some bird watching and comment-e-baazi.And I suddenly felt verrrryyyyy sleepy and hungry. Starting with the Mehendi waala naach gaana 2 days ago, I had hardly slept and in my case less sleep=infinite grumpiness. And infinite grumpiness + smiling non-stop for snaps and the like = pent up irritation to be showered on my privileged brother or K (lucky buggers).

So what started with super-duper fun at the Mehendi ( with older maushis dancing with SO much passion that the younger girls' matke jhatkes were abs no competition ) and the excitement of the reception with SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO many gifts (yes, I am shallow) , It was full blown physical exhaustion at the wedding. I wanted to be a glowing happy bride- but I was this grumpy sleepy woman ready to bark at anyone who would take it. I was told it was a pleasure to see such a nice conglomeration of traditions- yeah right! its always nice to sit and to watch and to be able to go pee whenever you want to.

In all this drama, the brother and I completely forgot to 'settle scores' with each other. That the poor chap single handedly managed most of the events , slept for a quarter of what I did and also ended up wearing the wrong tie for his suit will not convince me into shutting up. After all thats what brothers are for, hain na - to settle scores whenever you get the chance and emotionally blackmail them into a good Rakhi gift to make up for. I remember MM telling me how her brother was always the official event manager of the family weddings that during his own wedding someone- by force of habit told him to arrange cars for the brides party DURING the wedding :)

Well, it's been a year now and I am still trying to figure out what exactly is marraige all about. Right now,its living together with my best friend of 11 years (and BF of 3 years) with our love and respect for each other growing multi-fold with every passing day.

We celebrated our first Anniversary for almost 34 hours (to accommodate both IST and Pacific timings’ :D). A lovely gift shipped by the parents, bro and sis got me all teary eyed and emotional - especially since the fedex ka outer brown box had only K's name with the address! ARRGGGGHHHHHH!! And I know the brother would do this deliberately to bring my green-eyed, attention-seeking monster out (Which is not too difficult anyways).

We also had a lovely romantic dinner atop the revolving restaurant on the Seattle needle.And I am itching to write more about the resto as well as the needle.But, I shall keep that for another post :)