Housewife!

Housewife. You could put that down in the occupation section.

I could’ve thwacked Him on the head for that one, were we not in a place as public as the International Airport at Mumbai. His mischievous grin reminded me that I was married to the imp for good, so I just put down Writer and tugged Him towards the security check-in.

In traditional garb

I’m almost a week old in Australia now and the term housewife seems to become more real with each passing day. In India, during the idyllic post-wedding days, keeping house for Him seemed like the most natural thing to do for me.

Tune in to the here and now and the reality of sharing a life, living space, the couch, bathroom, reading light and so on in as intimately a manner as is possible with another person is slowly sinking in.

The fact that I am basically an immigrant wife living in Australian suburbia makes the entire transition even more strenuous. Suddenly those mousey immigrant wives languishing for their desh ki dharti as depicted in soaps and films are not so comically deplorable anymore. However contrary I may look for the part, put on a mangalsutra, salwar kameez, some gold or even a dawdling walk and *gasp* I may even look the part!

Let’s thanks our collective gods that I am several yards of saree and gold chains away from that picture of marital ho-hum. For now. Sigh.

Married life is a fascinating process to say the least and I doubt the novelty will wear off for another few years.  A certain friend of mine would scoff at that period of time, but darleen… you must remember the ghastly months both of us have spent apart from each other during our courtship.

It’s wonderfully maddening- having each other around for such long stretches of the day. Each day we discover something new about each other.

Like His near-worshipful attitude towards the chocolates in the fridge. Like my obsession with keeping toothbrushes apart from hair brushes and comb-cleaning brushes and every other brush in use. Like our shared love for crazy rides on His ultra-sexy bike. Like the way two non-telly viewers suddenly like watching corny movies and inferior advertisements completely wrapped up around each other.

Marriage sure is fun when the grocery bills and misplaced pills and cooking and cleaning duties stay out of the picture. For the arguments that arise when these marriage flotsam do enter the scene, I only have this to say- they do make things more, um…interesting.

So here’s a hesitant but hopeful sukaala to marriage! Our’s that is.

Got Hitched, Hooked and so very Married!

January the 9th came and went in such a blur that Mel & I are still periodically *ahem* pinching ourselves just to check our married status.

Trying to emulate the crazy biker couple centerpiece Shawn Lewis created for us.

Every one who attended the Pereira-Almeida wedding exclaimed over how smooth it went, how perfectly planned it seemed to be and how wonderful both the receptions turned out to be. Everytime I hear exclaimations like these, I mentally cross myself/touch wood/offer up an Hallelujah.

Why? Because a bride who has been planning her wedding a year in advance knows no respite from stress. Take it as a skewed ‘Confuscious Says’, but there’s the truth for you!

Searching for missing offertory papers

Take the nuptial mass for instance. It was to be a bilingual mass with a majority of the celebration in English and the rest in Marathi. Everything fell into place 20 minutes before I had to join Melroy at the church.

The last offering (a house of thermocol that we simply couldn’t obtain at the last minute) and the gospel readings and the people to do the various readings and the person to organize all of this (Val) were all minute decisions that had me nearly hyperventilating right until the offertory got over.

I even had Mel bemused by my slightly crazed expression during mass!

Exchanging our Wedding Vows

The nuptial mass went beautifully nonetheless and the choir exceeded my expectations, which is something.

Then came the wedding car fiasco. An open top jeepney was what Mel & I had decided for a wedding car. It was to arrive on the wedding morning all sparkling clean and polished black.

It arrived in the afternoon, all muddy and looking anything but impressive. The ever-dependable Rosalyn assisted by Gursimran and Joel managed to transform the backup car (a purple Honda Civic) into a gorgeous wedding car 10 minutes before Mel and I had to leave for the reception venue!

But I must stop with the nerve-wracking things that went on during those few days. Simply thinking about them is enough to make me break into a cold sweat.

BFLs

What matters is our families were with us. What matters is friends who stood by us. What matters is the bonds that were strengthened. What matters is the love that eveloped both the wedding houses in a warm caccoon for those few days and thereafter.

To love and savor forever...

What matters is Mel & I got hitched. Finally. With all our flaws and thorns and ups and downs and yucks nd aarrghs, marry we did. And how!

For all of you who made it for the wedding and made it a night to remember and savor forever, thank you!

The gorgeous T-Gang!

For all of you who couldn’t make it for whatever reasons, we missed you tremendously!

For all of you who I missed inviting, I’m truly sorry and hopefully by the time the next big celebration comes our way, we shall be able to enjoy your company.

Thank you for being such fantastic friends!

Chaddi-buddies!

Have you seen a stressed bride lately?

Do give her a slap and tell her to enjoy her wedding before it’s D-day.

No. Really. Do it. You might get a box in return, but by next year she will probably tell you how right you were and thank you for it. Well, not really. But it’s good to think positive. Works wonders for the mind.

I hope you folks read the last two paragraphs well because they ought to give you a good idea about my state-of-mind these days. All over the place. Unfocused. *shudder*

Less than two months to go for the wedding and all I can think of is grabbing my groom and making a run for it before we are stuffed into gorgeous clothes that will itch and make us look like two incredibly serious people.

Okay, I’m also thinking about the luggage I’ll have to leave behind (because I shopped like Becky Bloomwood), but let’s not emphasize that point since it gives the groom ulcers.

I should add how much my relations and near and far friends and acquaintances are looking forward to our wedding, but that will give my ulcers ulcers, so let’s move on to pleasanter things.

Like the gown’s underway. Noreen’s suggested some fantastic changes and modifications for the gown and I just might pester her to hurry up and finish it and let me wear it.

The flowers have been selected for the stunner I have for a bouquet. The bouquet-maker turned out to be married to my grandpa’s nephew and she has promised me that she will pay special attention to my bouquet.

The cards have been printed (there’s another story now). I am surrounded by the fragrance of freshly printed paper (not school text books) as I write this.

We also seem to have made some progress on the honeymoon destination.  What? You thought I’d add a li’l snippet on how that is getting along out here?! *snicker*

And incidentally, the guest list is growing. Like whoa. Like my li’l (ok, not so little now) cousin Jason. Like the budget. Like Congress influence in Vasai. Like this blog. You get the point si?

So I think I’ll end this mostly meaningless post right here. Because I’m so much in favor of proportionate text and picture ratio tonight, I even threw in some crazy photos for your drooling pleasure. The best of which is this last gown, created when (I’m quite sure) some morose dress-maker was busy getting stoned while trying to meet a deadline.

P.S: I am counting this as a gown-to-die-for. You can shoot me for it after I’m married. That way, my man will have no choice but to shoot you. Hence, revenge! <insert mad Mogambo laughter here>

Of Walls that Speak and Shout

15th August 2008: Wake up, attend mass & flag hoisting ceremony, watch prize distribution kaaryakram for the little Marathi paathshaala affiliated with our church, go home, laze around, eat chicken curry, sleep, wake up, go beaching, come home, eat, sleep.

15th August 2009: Wake up at the crack of dawn, chow down a genormous breakfast with Aditya while hustling him for graphic novels, catch up on conversations with Rehab, head to The Wall Project at Mahim, spend an entire day painting crazy-whacked graffiti on the walls running parallel to the station, have a smash time painting them with crazy-whacked people, experience culinary nirvana with fun company, come home bone-tired, eat, crash out senseless on the bed.

But oh my sainted aunts and uncles, I had fun. On Independence Day too!

Such a happy bunch they were to pose with our motley crew!

I have never ever participated in anything quite like The Wall Project. Not on Independence Day, not ever. Come to think of it, I had never heard of the BMC participating in something like The Wall Project either, EVER.

During those two paint-streaked, madly exciting days I saw and viciously thanked my stars for things like:

The little tots were our ready helpers and willing fellow artists

1. India and Bombay in particular,  is cool enough to think about community efforts like these and actively encourage them.

2. I experienced the BMC, children from the neighboring shanties, social workers, activists, hard core artists, vandals and hit-and-run drivers up close, most of them in their element. Some of these folks turned out to be realities that really bite. The things I saw and the people I experienced meeting and observed that day boggled me.

In Front of my Wall. Top L-R: Jai, me, Aditya, Shirley. Bottom L-R: Idea Smith, Shawn

3. I can haz fun too. Sometimes trudging all the way to that end of town from this end is more than worth it.

4. I am finally getting myself to experience whatever Bombay is throwing my way by way of culture. My last few months in this Burning City are months I am going to experience to their utmost and so far, they are turning out to be utterly fantastic!

5. Best part? I got to go berserk with people like Idea Smith, Rehab, Aditya, Jai, Wanderblah, Shawn, Jhayu, Aniceto, Moksh, Alpana and some more fun people whose names I can’t remember but really loved meeting!

Note: These photos have been clicked by Shirley, Shawn, Jhayu and me (in no particular order).

Our Wall on Day 1 was splattered with the whimsy talents of Alpana, Aditya, Rehab, Vishal and me, with inputs from our neighbor Jai and french fries from Moksh. We made for quite a colorful crew!

Awareness about various issues was a major highlight at The Wall

A Day at the Museum

11 June 2009
12.45 pm

I have never been to a museum alone. I should do it more often.

Ah! The things I am learning about myself with each idle day that passes…

I write this as I rest my tired feet and aching legs in a spartan cafeteria with modern art mumbo jumbo scrawled across it’s walls. Cheese flavored corn puffs and modern art mix and mingle in the caverns of a house dedicated to an ancient culture. A charming paradox.

Museums, churches, bookshops, flea markets, bathrooms, stationery shops… they fascinate me no end.

Artefacts to admire, silences that rush to sooth your mind, words that spill from generous bookshelves, trinkets that hold the soul of a place in them, the nothingness you find in a warm shower or soak, instruments that marvellously make life more efficient… bliss can be found in the most unexpected of places.

So I set out eagerly this morning to pay my repects at the Bahrain National Museum.

Situated on spacious grounds, the entrance is littered with obscurely twisted modern scultpures. A ticket that functions as a postcard granted me entrance to this lovely naturally illuminated building.

After gaping at some beautiful canvases on temporary exhibitions, I chanced upon a black heron lazily enjoying the shade with the coastline of urban Bahrain for a backdrop. A captivating sight, one of those that would look utterly stunning come dusk and night.

Have a look at the photos I managed to capture on my Tumblog. It will give you a better idea of the sights I saw.

I was unable to record the Dilmun wing properly thanks to a tetchy camera. Ancient Bahrain is referered to as Dilmun in records. This wing ended my mid-morning tryst with history- a tad technical (heavy on archeology) but supremely enviable (coins, seals – oh the fascinating variety!).

No trip to a musuem is complete without paying a visit to the souvenir shop and my tired but very willing legs towed me in that direction.

In my bag went a camel fridge magnets (I madly collect them), a chine plate (exquisite but very touristy) and a bookmark (colorful), all displaying the tag Bahrain rather prominently (this is a requisite, most tourists would agree). A word of advice though: You would have a better pick of souvenirs at the Duty Free section in Bahrain airport. The prices are pretty much the same and the choice is staggering.

A camelia plucked from the sparse but green landscape completeted my quest for undderstanding the local culture. I returned happy, satiated and more aware of the sweet-smelling, beige and ochre country with an achingly sweet-tooth called Bahrain.

1.20 am

Mamma Mia! I got the ‘Giving Away’ Song.

What do you when you come across a movie that gives you a delightful glow all over and makes you grin from start to finish?

Well, you go right ahead and grin with complete and utter abandon and savor the warm buttery feeling. That’s what you do.

You enjoy it without a thought for anything else going around you or for anyone around you for that matter.

That’s what I did while watching Mamma Mia. Grinned like a loon and lost myself in some welcome nostalgia. Dancing Queen, Mamma Mia, Honey Honey, Chiquitita… these were songs that colored many a picnic and school performance for me. Add a wedding theme to the entire package and I was done for.

To find a movie that has me enthralled from start to end is a rare thing. Unless I am watching it in a movie theatre, it is difficult to peg me down to the seat for most films. Which is why I think I ought to count this one as special.

Abba has been around for a long time now and all through my growing years, uncles, aunts and cousins would somehow resurrect a Dancing Queen or Voulez-Vous at some get-together or another (on tape or with conky singing).

A lot of pyjama parties in college got jiggied up with Take a Chance on Me, Mamma Mia et al and my best friends would string along a ditty or two quite sensationally, mind you.

I am quite sure they will end up doing the same for the bachelorette party as well. Incidentally, the hen party Sophie’s friends throw her in the film make me relish the thought of my own and rub my hands in anticipation.

Another thing I ought to be thanking the film for is for finally giving me the father and daughter dance song- the ‘Giving Away’ song as we Bombay Catholics like to put it. Counted as one of the main dances the bride has to dance to during the reception, the father-daughter dance is special, signalling the final farewell a dad can bid for his little girl (the mom has her chance when she bids the bride from the childhood home).

I have watched this particular dance a number of times at a number of weddings and as my own looms closer, I know it will be every bit as special for me as I had always envisioned it to be. My dad is no great dancer and neither can he swing me around like a fine gentleman.

But like every other father of the bride, I do know that he will want to Freeze the Picture and remember me as the little, sniffling ragamuffin he bid his first goodbye to when I went off to school for the first time. I hated every second that was spent slicking my boy-cut hair down and every gleam of my new shoes that morning. He still managed to click a photograph of me though and everytime I look at it now, I grin.

This time, it is not school I shall be leaving the home for, but to a new life. It is the great unknown, sure; but this time, I shall have years of love and advice and all the freedom he dusted the growing years of my life with.

For that, I am forever greatful.

The picture may not be frozen, but my goodbye shall hardly be graced with an absent-minded smile.

P.S: Incidentally, if you thought this was a review of the movie, I am sorry to disappoint. It’s what the movie made me feel and what it made me think of with regards to my own wedding. That’s what this blog is about in the end. So I am glad you understand and even gladder you stuck on so far to the Plan “W”.

The Strange Words in my Mind

10th June 2009
12.25 am Bahrain Time

It bothers me at times, how the strangest things have a way finding me in my corner of the planet. There I go lost in the maze I call my mind, not a care in the world and half the time unaware of what’s happening around me (yes, no accidents so far) and .bang. strange things happen. Usually in a steady staccato of occurrences.

Words, or more specifically the written word, have always held a fascination for me. I could sit reading a particularly evocative line for an hour, for the simple fact that it moved me enough to let me feel things more vividly than a mere visual would. The writers and poets I consider gods and goddesses are usually most people’s demi-gods.

It hardly matters to me.

I am more concerned with, nay, in pursuit of the emotions the words awaken in me. Awaken in me enough to want me to gulp hard and savor each breath of air that keeps me alive. Alive enough to feel each emotion conveyed in a few words or a few pages- whatever may be the case.

Weavers of words exist a dime-a-dozen, weaving their cottony thoughts to create the fine linen most people enjoy wearing and feel comfortable in. I may very well be one of them.

But to be revered and savored are those who produce fine silk and compel you to wear it without even a hint of persuasion.

As silk slides against the skin and makes you feel like the most enchanting being in the world there is, so do these words flow against the mind, rendering you a stranger to your own world but a brilliant observer of it.

I have nothing but my words to stand testament to the strange things that happen to me.

But today, words fail me. Or rather, I have failed them…

Thank you for sticking until the end of this horrendous rambling. I know I did not want to.

12.50 am Bahrain Time.

P.S: Coincidentally, today happens to be very similar to the day I penned this down.

The One Ring.

10th June ‘09
11.48 pm Bahrain Time

Something unexpected happened today.

I found the One Ring.

In a little nondescript jewellery shop, tucked away untidily between a big jewellery shop and a bigger jewellery showroom. The shop was so tiny that I have already forgotten its name.

All I can remember is the little band of yellow gold with a strip of rhodium running down the middle and having some of the most perfect striations embossed upon it.

The instant that I saw it, I wanted it.

Just to affirm my decision, I was taken into a few more ordinary showrooms.

Quite hopeless.

I wanted that band and no other would do. A prominently masculine design and one I was initially set against for my own wedding band, I loved it enough to want it on my own finger forever.

For the few moments I held that ring in my palm, I forgot a lot of unpleasant things. Things that had me frowning for nearly two days.

I forgot the unpleasantness of choosing wedding bands without my intended. I forgot my despair at not finding the right bauble to go with my gown, I forgot my escalating need for my mom that I was beginning to experience. Everything. Forgotten.

I found the One Ring.

It was not generic. It was not ordinary.. It was not old-fashioned.

It was unusual. It was romantic. It would turn out to be symbolic. It was stunning.

It was Ours.

12.06 am

The Perfect Ring. Again.

Yes, there was a post out here yesterday.

For reason’s beyond your’s or mine ken, this particular plan has been exterminated. So shoo on, the show is over for now.

Of Charming Teachers and Charming them…

6th June 2009
1.36pm (Bahrian time)

It’s an empty house I have come home to today. The sunlight is swishing in through the French windows this afternoon, unlike it’s angry barge a few days back.

For some reason, I am experiencing more fascinating things in the morning than in the evening out here in Bahrain.

This can be rather distressing for a person who is chummier with the night than the day.

An experience is an experience though. New, revealing and most often a delicious surprise. One mustn’t complain.

My morning began at utterly ungodly hour (6am) and I had to set out in godlier trimmings to do the pretty for a gaggle of women known to be formidable.

I set out to meet Melroy’s teachers today.

As one is bound to feel about an encounter with the keepers of enlightenment, I was raggedly nervous.

By the end of the morning, I found myself to be daughter-in-law to around 30 odd women!

While my paragon of a fiance is by no means a saint, he has apparently endeared himself to around two dozen lovely, intelligent women.

Jealous is me? Nope. Startled is I more like.

It is a good thing charm can be switched on and off, but what is even better is that the only woman He bothers to completely exclude from his aura of dazzlement is me.

I would be utterly disgruntled with Him were it otherwise. A women should never be too easy to please. Not with her lover .

1.45pm