I got up early , all excited , with an air of anticipation ,expecting incessant phone calls , mailbox flooded with congratulatory mails and smses saying all cute and funny things on having completed 20 years of married life. For some weird reason I was expecting the whole world to remember that it was my marriage anniversary today and was hoping that everyone I know would take its cognizance.
For the record , darling hubby did call up at 12 .00 midnight to wish ‘happy anniversary’ .He has never forgotten any important dates so far and that makes him qualify in the rare category of husband community who do not make obvious mistakes .
Early morning my brother called up , he talked about Lokpal bill , shared his kids’ antics while I all the while hoped that he would now congratulate me ,now would the C word come but all in vain .
I asked him - It's December you remember anything special?
Bro: yup. Christmas , year end, account closing time , my car’s insurance ……he would have gone on.
I had given up hope on he remembering on his own so I decided to be direct.
Me: its December 29th my wedding anniversary
Bro: oh yeah………I remember 20 years back ……29th you got married , 31st I rushed for Delhi for coaching.
This is the only thing he remembers about my marriage ? How self centered .
The C word was still not on its way .
Me: Do mom, dad remember?
Bro: I am not sure ,I will remind them though.
Me: wouldn’t you congratulate me ?
By this time , he had decided to be evil and …….a wet blanket and……. a spoil sport and was all set to pour cold water over my enthusiasm .
Bro: I will ask wifey to do that on our behalf. She looks after public relations in the family.
Me:Grrrrrrrrrr!
And he hung up . some time later I got an insipid Sms saying Congratulations but by then I had given up on bro atleast .
In the afternoon Mom called up . I complained and sulked .
Me: you did not remember that it was my wedding anniversary today , right?
Mom: Ofcourse we did . Just yesterday we were reminiscent of how it being the coldest day of the decades we had to make extraordinary arrangements for quilts and beddings for the guests .
(So even she had only such memories invoked .no special mention of my effort to make the marriage work , no C word and I was blaming brother for being self centered .I decided to go along with the flow of conversation in order to feel less frustrated)
Me: yeah…I remember . The previous to previous night I had put mehandi and because of severe cold the mehandi felt so chilling on hand and feet and there was a Bon fire in the backyard on the previous to previous night.
Mom: yeah and sooooo many relatives attended your wedding . almost everyone invited had come and dad had had a bad tooth ache . He wore dhoti despite my advice to wear coat and formals for wedding but he never listens to me………..And it was a two days wedding .These days nobody has it for 2 days.
OK. Now daddy wants to speak to you.
Dad: hello beta . our ashirvads to both of you .
Oh , I know my dad always speaks right things . He knows my feelings. He will never disappoint me . He is the best………….let hubby learn a few lessons from him on sensitivity ,it’s never too late.
The next thing will be Congratulations , I know.
Dad: Did S(hubby ) call up? Tell him I asked about him .
Me: yes dad , he did at 12 O Clock.
Dad: ask him not be awake till so late. How’s he doing there? We have received his PMI certificate and I have kept it securely .
Being thoroughly disappointed that nobody was interested to congratulate us or even as much as say ‘many happy returns ‘ even if in perfunctory way I now decided to call up people and tell on my own that it was our wedding anniversary today (as if they had won a chance to talk to me on phone ).
So , here are some snippets of conversations I had with family .
Cousin S : Hey didi , yr wedding anniversary today ? wow! We had so much fun on your wedding . It was the first wedding in family . We had so much of euphoria of buying new dresses, meeting up other cousins. So many relatives came and stayed with us .
Brotherin law: Gawd ! what a cold day it was. I was ferrying people to and fro all the day in my brand new car . what a trustworthy Fiat I had . You remember, due to biting cold many people did not turn up for the reception in the evening and we ended up having a tank full of Gulabjamuns.
I laughed away to glory remembering how my MIL was packing those Gulabjamuns for every guest taking leave and me and my BIL were keeping a count and tchtching the loss.
BIL: you remember , for days together we used to sit on steps and eat those gulabjamuns ,even when there were only floating pieces left in the syrup? What fun it was.
SIL: Hey yr wedding day I wore the orange saree . I have my so far the best photos taken in your wedding.
FIL: A gift of 4000/ sanctioned to you. 1000/for S and 3000/ for you.
Cousin A : my mom made me and my sis P wear similar shiny dresses and P had a big bandage on her head which she flaunted like a head gear .
Uncle B has had a memory loss recently so I told him ,it was my wedding anniversary today and it has been 20 years since I am married.
Uncle B: (accompanied with a roaring laughter) arrre wah! But are you counting ? was it so tough all these days?
Even I could not stop laughing the way he said . we both had a hearty laugh together.
Late in the night I told hubby about all these conversations and he laughed and said ,
So you called all these people on your own ?what were you expecting ? that you will be given a lifetime achievement award for putting up with me for 20 years .
I was speechless and then he said ‘our marriage is our matter , we owned it so well , people may have had stake in the wedding but never in our marriage so they will never be able to see it beyond wedding reception and glamour (did we have any?)’ .
Right, If he had been a drunkard or I had been a ‘main ghar chhod ke jaa rahi hoon types’(Please note the types of vices of men and women ,while a man has to be a drunkard to spoil the marriage ,women just have to threaten to leave and she qualifies for spoiling the marriage. Talk of hippocratic standards! ) then all these people would have pitched in and tried us to stay together but since there was never a chance of such emergency , our marriage reminded only this little to them .
I asked hubby what he remembered of our wedding day
Hubby : you were the simplest bride I had ever imagined . You could have even gone to college if you wanted, on our wedding day.
Me: that’s a huge huge exaggeration ,never heard of something so silly . How could it be possible , how could I go to college on our wedding day?
Hubby : yeah , right .It would not have been possible. We got married on Sunday.
PS-So, this is the documentation of some of the events of our wedding . It was quite a non glamorous , 2 days jamboree with hundreds of people from both the families attending and contributing a huge loss to the national income by being absent from work.And guys , while everyone around had lots of fun, me and my husband were just incidental in the whole scheme of things.
For the record , darling hubby did call up at 12 .00 midnight to wish ‘happy anniversary’ .He has never forgotten any important dates so far and that makes him qualify in the rare category of husband community who do not make obvious mistakes .
Early morning my brother called up , he talked about Lokpal bill , shared his kids’ antics while I all the while hoped that he would now congratulate me ,now would the C word come but all in vain .
I asked him - It's December you remember anything special?
Bro: yup. Christmas , year end, account closing time , my car’s insurance ……he would have gone on.
I had given up hope on he remembering on his own so I decided to be direct.
Me: its December 29th my wedding anniversary
Bro: oh yeah………I remember 20 years back ……29th you got married , 31st I rushed for Delhi for coaching.
This is the only thing he remembers about my marriage ? How self centered .
The C word was still not on its way .
Me: Do mom, dad remember?
Bro: I am not sure ,I will remind them though.
Me: wouldn’t you congratulate me ?
By this time , he had decided to be evil and …….a wet blanket and……. a spoil sport and was all set to pour cold water over my enthusiasm .
Bro: I will ask wifey to do that on our behalf. She looks after public relations in the family.
Me:Grrrrrrrrrr!
And he hung up . some time later I got an insipid Sms saying Congratulations but by then I had given up on bro atleast .
In the afternoon Mom called up . I complained and sulked .
Me: you did not remember that it was my wedding anniversary today , right?
Mom: Ofcourse we did . Just yesterday we were reminiscent of how it being the coldest day of the decades we had to make extraordinary arrangements for quilts and beddings for the guests .
(So even she had only such memories invoked .no special mention of my effort to make the marriage work , no C word and I was blaming brother for being self centered .I decided to go along with the flow of conversation in order to feel less frustrated)
Me: yeah…I remember . The previous to previous night I had put mehandi and because of severe cold the mehandi felt so chilling on hand and feet and there was a Bon fire in the backyard on the previous to previous night.
Mom: yeah and sooooo many relatives attended your wedding . almost everyone invited had come and dad had had a bad tooth ache . He wore dhoti despite my advice to wear coat and formals for wedding but he never listens to me………..And it was a two days wedding .These days nobody has it for 2 days.
OK. Now daddy wants to speak to you.
Dad: hello beta . our ashirvads to both of you .
Oh , I know my dad always speaks right things . He knows my feelings. He will never disappoint me . He is the best………….let hubby learn a few lessons from him on sensitivity ,it’s never too late.
The next thing will be Congratulations , I know.
Dad: Did S(hubby ) call up? Tell him I asked about him .
Me: yes dad , he did at 12 O Clock.
Dad: ask him not be awake till so late. How’s he doing there? We have received his PMI certificate and I have kept it securely .
Being thoroughly disappointed that nobody was interested to congratulate us or even as much as say ‘many happy returns ‘ even if in perfunctory way I now decided to call up people and tell on my own that it was our wedding anniversary today (as if they had won a chance to talk to me on phone ).
So , here are some snippets of conversations I had with family .
Cousin S : Hey didi , yr wedding anniversary today ? wow! We had so much fun on your wedding . It was the first wedding in family . We had so much of euphoria of buying new dresses, meeting up other cousins. So many relatives came and stayed with us .
Brotherin law: Gawd ! what a cold day it was. I was ferrying people to and fro all the day in my brand new car . what a trustworthy Fiat I had . You remember, due to biting cold many people did not turn up for the reception in the evening and we ended up having a tank full of Gulabjamuns.
I laughed away to glory remembering how my MIL was packing those Gulabjamuns for every guest taking leave and me and my BIL were keeping a count and tchtching the loss.
BIL: you remember , for days together we used to sit on steps and eat those gulabjamuns ,even when there were only floating pieces left in the syrup? What fun it was.
SIL: Hey yr wedding day I wore the orange saree . I have my so far the best photos taken in your wedding.
FIL: A gift of 4000/ sanctioned to you. 1000/for S and 3000/ for you.
Cousin A : my mom made me and my sis P wear similar shiny dresses and P had a big bandage on her head which she flaunted like a head gear .
Uncle B has had a memory loss recently so I told him ,it was my wedding anniversary today and it has been 20 years since I am married.
Uncle B: (accompanied with a roaring laughter) arrre wah! But are you counting ? was it so tough all these days?
Even I could not stop laughing the way he said . we both had a hearty laugh together.
Late in the night I told hubby about all these conversations and he laughed and said ,
So you called all these people on your own ?what were you expecting ? that you will be given a lifetime achievement award for putting up with me for 20 years .
I was speechless and then he said ‘our marriage is our matter , we owned it so well , people may have had stake in the wedding but never in our marriage so they will never be able to see it beyond wedding reception and glamour (did we have any?)’ .
Right, If he had been a drunkard or I had been a ‘main ghar chhod ke jaa rahi hoon types’(Please note the types of vices of men and women ,while a man has to be a drunkard to spoil the marriage ,women just have to threaten to leave and she qualifies for spoiling the marriage. Talk of hippocratic standards! ) then all these people would have pitched in and tried us to stay together but since there was never a chance of such emergency , our marriage reminded only this little to them .
I asked hubby what he remembered of our wedding day
Hubby : you were the simplest bride I had ever imagined . You could have even gone to college if you wanted, on our wedding day.
Me: that’s a huge huge exaggeration ,never heard of something so silly . How could it be possible , how could I go to college on our wedding day?
Hubby : yeah , right .It would not have been possible. We got married on Sunday.
PS-So, this is the documentation of some of the events of our wedding . It was quite a non glamorous , 2 days jamboree with hundreds of people from both the families attending and contributing a huge loss to the national income by being absent from work.And guys , while everyone around had lots of fun, me and my husband were just incidental in the whole scheme of things.
