wedding – Pertinent Observations

Ten pertinent observations, ten years later

It’s been ten years since this happened:

So we spent the morning watching our wedding video (yes, you might think wedding videos are useless, but they do come in useful once in a while, so you better get them taken) with our daughter. Here are ten pertinent observations about our wedding after watching this video, in no particular order.

The whole thing seems way too long drawn out (the official wedding itself lasted seven sessions, or three days and a half). I remember being incredibly tired and stressed out by the end of it. A lot of things we did seem rather meaningless, in hindsight, as well.
Given a choice now, I’d do it in a registrar’s office, followed by a party.
For our reception, my niece, who was then barely a teenager, was wearing a “cold shoulder” dress. I had no clue that cold shoulder tops/dresses were already a thing in India in 2010, or that it had already gotten popular with teenagers.
We had invited lots of people. It was absolute chaos at our wedding, especially since it was on a Sunday morning. Guests at the wedding included aunt’s school friends, my grandfather’s cousins (some of whom I didn’t know at all), the priest at a temple near my wife’s house, the bhelpuri guy with a cart down the road from my wife’s house, parents of a friend I’d long lost touch with, the guy who supplies coffee powder to my in-laws, etc. Now you know why Indian weddings (pre covid-19, at least) are big and fat.
Some of the guests whom neither of us know well – we have over the years tagged them by the gift they gave us at the wedding. “This is my dad’s cousin who gave us that clock”, or “this is the family that gave the plate”, etc. Sometimes we think that if we don’t know the hosts well, what gifts we give doesn’t matter. Not always true.
On the other hand, you don’t remember the gifts that people close to you gave you. Your relationship with them goes far beyond a wedding gift.
The funniest part of reception photos is when groups get mixed together. Given that we had long lines (see 3 above), taking a photo with just one guest was a sort of waste of time. So in some cases, people were arbitrarily (based on their position in line) clubbed together for photos. It’s fun to see these combinations, in hindsight.
The only way we know that someone attended our wedding is if they gave us a gift (they’re all tabulated in a diary), or if they came up on stage (braving the crowds) to wish us during the wedding or the reception. So if you think that your “presence is itself a present”, then you need to make sure that you clearly register your presence.
The evening of my wedding, I saw two emails, from friends saying “I was there at your wedding. I’m not sure if you saw me”. Smartphones weren’t a thing in 2010, but if you’re going to do this now, you better attach a selfie as well.
There’s a reason I’ve put a picture from our wedding, and not from our reception, as part of this post. We both look absolutely atrocious at our reception. Both heavily over-made-up. Every time we look at our reception photos, we end up laughing loudly at each other.
I’ve worn my wedding suit only once in the last 10 years – for my wife’s MBA graduation. My wife hasn’t worn her reception sari even once after the wedding (I had completed my MBA before we got married). At the time we bought them, they were our costliest ever suit and costliest ever sari respectively.
It’s fun to watch these photos and videos to see how some people have changed over the years. A lot of people have visibly gotten older in the last 10 years. Many others look exactly the same. And some people actually look younger now than they did at our wedding (maybe a function of fitness?).
The funnest to look at are those who were kids at the time of our wedding, but who are adults now. And those who had hair at the time of our wedding, and don’t now.
Over the years, the influence of Bollywood has meant that South Indian weddings have borrowed a lot from North Indian weddings. Like mehndi is a common thing in South Indian weddings now. Maybe shoe hiding as well. However, we’re extremely proud of the one thing we “imported”, and which not too many others have done (even ten years down the line).
On the eve of our wedding, at the wedding hall itself, we had a dance party. Yes, really. We had a DJ. No choreography nonsense. Just a good old post-dinner dance party. Among other things, we got to see a side of some relatives that we hadn’t otherwise seen. It was great fun overall.

Festive lunches

There was a point in time (maybe early childhood) when I used to look forward to going to weddings just for the food. Maybe my parents’ network was such that most weddings we went to served good food, or I was too young to be discerning, but I would love the food at most functions and absolutely belt it.

Of late things haven’t been so kind. Maybe the general standard of wedding lunches has fallen (the last “function” where I remember the food being spectacularly good was my sister-in-law’s wedding, and that was in early 2017), or I’ve become more discerning in terms of the kind of food I like, but it’s not the case any more.

Recently I had written about how several functions serve lunch and dinner really late, and that we should make it a habit to eat at home before we go for such functions. The other problem is that even when food is served promptly, it frequently leaves me rather underwhelmed.

It doesn’t have to always do the quality of cooking, though. For example, most of the food at the wedding I attended today was cooked really well, and was tasty, but it was perhaps the choice of menu that has left me rather underwhelmed and hungry even after eating a lunch with 3 different sweets!

The problem with Indian wedding food is that they are massive carb fests. The main dish, if one were to call it, is rice (people like my daughter don’t mind at all – she belted a whole load of plain rice today). And then there are accompaniments, most of which seem watered down (and really, what is it about functions just not serving huLi (sambar) nowadays? At least that’s usually reasonably think and has lentils in it). And then there are sweets.

There are some fried items but they are served in such small quantities that you can’t really get “fat nutrition” from it. There is a token amount of ghee served at the beginning of the meal, but that’s about it! There’s not much protein and vegetables in the meal either.

So you “belt” the meal and fill yourself, only to find yourself hungry an hour later. And this has happened on the last four or five occasions when I’ve eaten “function food”.

Maybe it has to do with my regular diet which has of late become more “high density“, that I find these low density meals rather underwhelming. Maybe all the wedding meals I enjoyed came at a time when my regular diet was low density as well. Maybe people were more liberal with ghee and vegetables back then (this is unlikely since people in India are, on average, far more prosperous now than they were in my childhood).

Oh, and did I mention that my daughter belted copious amounts of plain rice at today’s lunch? An hour later she too was complaining of hunger. I guess I’ll let her figure out about density of food her own way!

Anniversaries past and present

I realise that whenever there is an occasion where I want to write something and I don’t know what to write, I can simply rely on my superior long-term memory, and do a this-day-that-year kind of thing. So here goes, recounting past anniversaries.

-1 (2009): The day began with some errands. I even remember what those errands were but it doesn’t matter here. I finished up with those errands and drove up to Rajajinagar and picked up the now wife and her sister (who I was meeting for the first time) from in front of the Nirmala toilet in Rajajinagar, in front of the Capuchin monastery. We drove up to the 100 ft restaurant in Indiranagar and had lunch.

Then we went shopping. Of course those were still early days for me to buy stuff for her, but she bought lots of things anyway. And that was the day I realised what it’s like to take out a woman shopping – hanging out in the area just outside the dressing rooms while she tried stuff, without trying to look awkward. And then Baada, who had brought his then-newlywed-wife shopping to the same place “caught” me there.

Later in the evening I visited her place for the first time, and had both “tiffin” and dinner there. And made small talk with the in-laws, whom I’d met for the first time less than a week earlier.

1 (2011): It was quite unremarkable, frankly. She went to work. I bummed around all morning and went for a lecture in the afternoon (all the way across town) and walked out of it in half an hour since it was so uninteresting. We went to RimNaam at the Oberoi on MG Road for dinner. Apart from the complimentary cake they gave us (since we told them it was our anniversary), it was quite unspectacular.

2 (2012): We were doing a week-long holiday in Goa, along with the in-laws. The day began with the mother-in-law picking flowers from all over the resort and making a small bouquet and handing it over to us. Presently we went to the flea market in Anjuna (it was a Wednesday) and got bored, since we hate bargaining. We then decamped to Calangute, and discovered Infantaria where we had an awesome lunch.

In the evening we went to Thalassa in Vagator where we emptied a bottle of Chilean wine and ate awesome Greek food. We hadn’t booked early enough to catch a cliff-side seat, though, but it didn’t matter since the sun set behind clouds that day.

3 (2013): The day itself was unremarkable. The previous day I was returning from a work trip to Bombay, and I hunted around the airport for a gift, not able to decide until they called for boarding when I picked up what was frankly an unremarkable pair of artificial earrings. She had put in more thought into my gift, though. I got a nice large notebook (which I’ve never used much) and a nice Parker ballpen (which I’ve used so much that I’ve had to change the refill already).

The next day (technically speaking, since the flight was at 1 am or something) we went off to Singpur, where we enjoyed Sushobhan and Sudha’s hospitality, visited museums, got stuck in rain, waited for taxis and were again taken for a wonderful dinner by Sushobhan and Sudha.

4 (2014): Still early in the day yet, early for me and very very early for her. I’m in Bangalore, she’s in Barcelona. Our first long-distance anniversary. I might update this post tomorrow.

And finally, 0 (2010): It was a long day. I actually woke up late. Was paranoid while shaving since I didn’t want to cut myself on the day of my wedding. The late start meant I had the opportunity to eat good breakfast, a luxury she didn’t have since she was involved in some pre-ceremony poojes. The ceremony started at 11, and we went for a ceremonial lunch at 5 (yeah, South Indian brahmin weddings take so long). And then we had to get ready for the reception. Both of us started laughing at each other since we were both so badly made up! And then two hours of standing and shaking people’s hands and posing for photographs. And then some more ceremonies.

And then we went home, where I had some Absolut Orange stashed away. We hadn’t bothered getting the ceremonial glass of milk, so we just took a shot each of the Absolut. And we couldn’t even sleep in peace since there were remnants of the wedding ceremony the following day!