Well this one has been very long overdue. Over a month! And I'm thinking I shouldn't procrastinate anymore! [:D] So here goes...
So the story starts when I met Shakti for lunch one day for some work. Now I know Shakti because of Anar, so we obviously talked about her. And Mr. Shakti tells me, of all things, Ms. Anar is very soon gonna be Mrs. And I was like she's dead! She hasn't even bothered to tell me! Its true we haven't exactly kept in touch for sometime but if she gets married she better tell me!! So next day I call her and scream my head off!
Now that was a first! She was way too shocked that I called in the first place. She had been planning on finishing her wedding website before she sent me the link, so as to give me all info in one go and reduce the amount of screaming she received. :P She got screamed at anyway. And then she was gonna scream at Shakti for telling me before she did. But how was he supposed to know I didn't know? Poor guy. :P
Anyway so after doing a lot of mollifying the first question Anar had to answer was, I guess quite obviously, "Who's the lucky guy?!!". :P See thats how long we had been out of touch. So then out came all stories about Mr. Kalyan. And she kept telling me to attend her wedding!
Well after I spoke to her, all I could think was I didn't attend Rads' wedding and all I have now are regrets! So I looked up the calendar and the amount of leave I had remaining for the year and it turned out, if I went home for Diwali and extended it a bit, I could attend her wedding! :D
So rest is history! I got my tickets pronto and had two reasons to be jumping up and down. I was going to celebrate Diwali at home after a LONG time and I was attending Anar's wedding!! :D
So I went home for Diwali. I've already blogged about that. :D So I can skip to the day I reached Pune straight away. :)
Now I've seen quite a few weddings and I know things go absolutely crazy during them! So for the wedding on 21st, reaching on 17th, I was expecting a lot of people to be at her house. So when Uncle [Anar's dad] talked to me over the phone and gave me instructions to reach their house in Pune, I thought he must be running around shouting at a lot of people telling them what to do and amidst all that, also telling me how to get there. :P
The journey of 4 hours took me 6 and I finally reached Ruturaj Bunglow close to 6 pm. And to my utter amazement, the only person at home was Anar's dad! There was nobody else there! Anar had gone shopping with her mom, kaku and Christine. Christine is Anar's friend from UPenn who had just arrived a day before and had wanted to buy sarees for herself. I was like wow! She's gonna wear sarees! Here you see me and Christine during the Grihmukh Puja on the 18th. [Manu, Christine and me were the bindi sisters that day! We were all wearing the same bindi! :P ]So I finally met Anar after a long long time that night. And I couldn't believe she has long hair! I have ALWAYS seen her in really short hair! :D
We then went to a nearby place for dinner and I had some authentic Pav Bhaaji from Maharashtra for the first time! :D We ate a LOT. :D And talked a lot also, thinking of all the times we've had in the past and what fun those times were! So we talked and talked during dinner and after that at home until Uncle and Aunty shooed us into bed coz the next morning we had to wake up early for the Grihmukh Pujan.
Me and Christine took the room on the third floor, so we were roomies for 5 days! :D Amidst all of this we [Manu, Christine n me] were trying to pull off a Bachelorette party. Unfortunately it didn't work out. But you should've heard the fantabulous ideas! How would you give Anar a surprise in her own house, when she's not allowed to step out until she gets married and a proper Bachelorette party at that. Especially when she was quite averse to the idea given the million things that had yet to be done. We thought we could always sneak some people and party stuff to the rooftop, tackle Anar and wrap her into a carpet and get some people to carry her upstairs. And not allow her to go down until it was over. Talk of crazy ideas! :P Well given the craziness of the idea, I guess it was gud it wasn't actually put into effect. :P
The morning of 18th dawned clear and bright and we were rushed to getting ready for Grihmukh Pujan which was to be done on the rooftop of Anar's house [Ruturaj Bunglow]. I must mention that Manu, Christine and me were all very impressed by the laddoos that were prepared for the occasion and we never left a single chance of hogging on them! :D They deserve a picture in this blog! :D Here you see Manu stealing one! :DThe
beauticians were already here, trying to get Anar all made-up and ready for the event. A purple/gold saree and matching jewellery in gold. When she was finally ready, she looked quite fabulous! Though she kept complaining that they had put too much make-up on her [which Anar being Anar, she took off a half hour later and then everyone told her she's looking damn good, so she was over the moon! :D ].Here's the sexy foto of her that we were thinking of trading-in to get Kalyan to pay us more for his stolen shoes [more about that later, he turned out to be one BIG cheapskate jijju! :P]. And as usual I was wielding a camera and trying to capture all important moments of the Puja. The professional photographer who was hired for the job might have been juz a tad bit irritated by me. :P
We then had a huge lunch at home itself. Caterers were employed to cook for everyone who came for the Puja and we had a hearty meal. I really can't remember the names of the dishes but most of them were new to me. I've never had authentic Maharashtrian food before. It was good food! I had one complaint though, [almost] everything in the main course [even something like dal] seemed to have sugar/jaggery in it! And I do not like sweet stuff in my food [unless its the dessert of course]! That certainly was a new experience. And you should've seen how much Christine was enjoying herself! She loves Indian food! And according to her food is a very universal language. If you don't know the language, you can always motion with your hands and people will know you're talking of food! ;)
After the food, it was time for the Mehendi. Anar's mom had asked professional women to come over and put Mehendi for everyone present.
So once this started on the rooftop, Manu and me set-up my laptop and Anar's speakers and blasted songs! :D It was proper festive environment! We also made quite a few [failed] attempts of getting people to come and dance with us. :P Anar finally came up and they started putting Bridal mehendi for her. It took about 2 hours and her hands and feet were totally adorned in beautiful mehendi designs. She kept counting how many peacocks they had made for her in the intricate designs! :DIt was almost dinner time when all the females in the house had at least some mehendi on their hands. It was totally a women's day. There were no males in sight anywhere in the house. :D [I think they were watching Cricket downstairs, I can't remember anymore!]
Dinner was served and everyone went downstairs to eat because we were pretty much famished! [Surprisingly, coz we hadn't really done much all day! :P] It was a fiasco trying to eat when all our hands were covered in Mehendi designs! We were then introduced to the new concept of 'Cut Dosas'! It was just that the dosa was chopped up into 3-4 pieces so that you could just use a fork to eat each of the pieces one by one. :P
It was also during this dinner that we were introduced to our new partner-in-crime [for the shoe stealing business ;)], though we didn't know it yet,..... introducing Mr. Devdutta! :P He and Christine got into this heated discussion on something about Texas. I had NO clue as to what was going on [blame my little knowledge about perceptions of various states in the US] but I was amused nonetheless. :P
When everyone had finally eaten and the party at home pretty much consisted of those who were staying there or the neighbouring house, we decided it was time for a dance bash! :D Everyone went to the rooftop and my laptop and Anar's speakers did a very good job indeedio making us dance for an hour plus! :P The highlight of the session, without any argument was Uncle's [Anar's dad] dance on Kajrare acting as Amitabh Bachchan! :D We even got Anar's mom to dance. And of course I can't not mention Anar dancing like mad :D and Christine showing her fabulous dance moves! The video making session probably didn't last as long as we spent watching and re-watching the videos afterwards! :P But it definitely was a LOT of fun! Unfortunately we do not have any photos taken during this session, only videos, so no visual-aid for this one. :P
Finally, Uncle shooed us off to bed since we had already exceeded the curfew time ;) of 11 pm. :D
19th was a zero day, as in no official ceremonies planned, but yet loads to be done! I call it the Bridesmaids' Beautification Day! :P The beauticians had come down in the morning to give Anar a facial etc. and I think they did not even spend half the amount of time on her that they spent on the rest of us! :P And it was then that Anar took charge of the camera and clicked quite a few shots of us for which she got screamed at by Manu. :P
We also helped in packing of all the gifts which were to be sent to Kalyan's family members. That took a lot of time because there were a lot of gifts. And Uncle had to keep running around buying more wrapping paper and ribbons and also trying to find more boxes to store them in! Hehe.. Oh I must mention that Anar has a lot of Mamaji's! I frankly lost count after a while! :P I'm not very good at remembering relations/relatives in the first place [keep getting confused about my own distant relatives!!], so that was expected. :P
Besides all of this we were still trying to choreograph the dance which we were to perform during the Seemant Pujan, the next day when Kalyan's family arrived. Believe it or not we managed to do some part of Kajra mohabbat waala with help from Anar as well [!], just after dinner. We saw the original video on YouTube and tried to copy some moves. Manu got so much into the choreography that she actually wore her Lehenga to come up with skirt waving moves. :D It most certainly is a most enjoyable song to dance to. :D
[To be continued....]
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