Tweet

Wedding – The Director’s Cut

An update has been long pending. It is funny to write about one’s own wedding though. May be that’s why I have been putting it off all this while. But hey, if I don’t write it now, chances are that it will never get written and a few puzzled or pissed off people will remain to be so, so here goes…

Facts first: We got married on June 6th, 2010 And that raises the first question – oh, wasn’t it May 26th? And that raises the second question – May 26th? We never even knew! So, I have to address both the audience. I will start with the latter.

Yes, it was very very bad on my part not to have told y’all that we were getting married on May 26th and I am really sorry for that. It is just that if, out of the blue, someone calls you a terrorist, you tend to get a bit shaken up and a lot of plans go out of the window.

—-

Mayuraa was leaving to India on May 13th. She was all packed and set and was about to leave to the JFK airport when she got a call from her roommate in Troy: “Hey, we have some police people inquiring about you! They say they are from the Counter-terrorism unit. Seems they got tipped off that you and Shankar might be indulging in some suspicious terrorist-like activities!”.

Few minutes later, Mayuraa was frantically explaining the story to me over the phone while her roommates in Troy were answering questions from the officers.’Surreal’ could be an understatement. We had absolutely no idea what was going on and we were trying to figure out who might have been so kind. Then it hit us: the movers! We had employed some movers to get our stuff moved from Troy and Stamford to Manhattan (ugh, and for those who don’t know, we are currently living at Midtown Manhattan). We had a tough time with them since they could not produce the necessary insurance documents which our landlord wanted (someone on their side had the moron-mode on and it was difficult to tell which one was it). Did they get so pissed as to go complain about us?

Turns out, it was indeed the movers who tried to play the concerned citizen. Our cargo was very less and we did not have any furniture. And we were moving from Connecticut to Mid-town Manhattan. And we did not u-haul and were paying a fortune to the movers since, well, both of us don’t have license to drive. So, for the movers, probably we looked like Shehzad Mark-II. Nevermind the fact that we are RPI grad students, Indians and Hindus. Look at the skin color and voila! – we got a terrorist!

Mayuraa’s roommates saved the day for us. They made sure they explained our backgrounds, our jobs, our lack of licenses etc and the officers understood what was happening here. They promptly said that they will close the case (yessir, we had a terrorism suspect case opened on our names! ah, the distinction ).

Moral of the story: never tip well for good work, for you might be misconstrued as a terrorist.
Collateral damage: Last five days of my stay in US went in making sure that this mess-up was patched up: the five days in which I was planning to send out a whole bunch of invites for my wedding.

—-

The trip back to India was uneventful and I had to hit the ground running with all the shopping that was due before marriage. Shopping fever subsided slowly and we were all gearing up for the big day. May 24th, the day of the Mehendi at Mayuraa’s place. I still had some last minute work to do and I was contemplating on getting my face fixed some way for it looked exactly like the terrorist I was suspected of.

The call came from my almost-mother-in-law. “Very bad news Shankar. Mayuraa’s chittappaa (paternal uncle) passed away”. That was brutal. They lived in the same house and he was very close to all of them, especially the younger ones. The loss meant so many things. But, for sure, it meant one. We couldn’t have the wedding two days later. We had to cancel all that was planned. It also meant calling up all the people we had invited to tell them that the event was not taking place. Yeah, that was brutal.

Nobody knew how we were going to tell this to my mother. I made like a zillion phone calls to get counsel from everyone I could, on what to do next. Very soon, it became clear. If the wedding had to take place, it had to be only after the 13 days of mourning. How could it be arranged in such a short notice? Where could we find a wedding hall within 10 days? Questions. Questions.

Well, we had to find the answers. And answers we did find. The next few days were probably the most intense I would have seen in recent times. But, things started falling into place. It was a big relief to find that we could arrange the wedding in a small hall run by a temple in Mylapore itself. The mood was obviously different. We wanted the event, but we did not want celebrations. We wanted a wedding that would be simple and memorable. Unfortunately, that meant we had to invite a select few and leave out a lot of other people. We felt very sad but it had to be done.

With a diary in hand, a carry-bag to hold currency, documents, bills and what-not and a phone which kept ringing continuously, I became a temporary wedding planner. Mornings, I went out with my aunt to arrange all that was needed for the wedding. Afternoons, I was out with my brother and sister-in-law to finalize stuff for the reception. Evenings, I took stock of things and made all phone calls necessary for the next day’s plan.

On June 6th morning, we were ready. After a blistering hot couple of weeks, it rained that day. We tied the knot. And all was well.

We had people around us. Relatives who had the perfect solution for every problem that presented itself. It was amazing. I was awestruck by the support we got. I would be eternally thankful to my aunt, my brother and all others who were there with us to pull this off.

Perhaps some of our ‘well-wishers’ wanted us to have an ‘interesting’ time with our wedding. Well, I am glad to say we did have that time, and I think the best part is that it made us believe more, and we are very happy to be back and confident that we would have some good times ahead of us.