Twin weddings

It is a wonderful feeling you get after a wedding in the family. If it is two weddings happiness manifolds. You get to meet cousins, aunts,uncles, nieces, nephews all in one place. Some of them you anyway meet often. Some after a long gap. If you keep your eyes and ears open you can enjoy a lot. It is amazing to see how a prolonged quarrel that went on for decades melts with just a phone call inviting the other to attend the wedding. Just a smile and you renew a long forgotten relationship and start taking advices on subjects varying from stock trading to real estate dealing to even finding a life partner for your beloved offspring, totally forgetting that till only yesterday you thought it was impossible to have even a word beyond a forced smile with that person.

A nephew from wife's side would come from USA with spouse and kids all the way to attend a wedding. A niece from husband's side from Kolkatta might have taken a longer travel time. All with intentions to visit as many relatives as possible but end up satisfying a few and making the rest grumble for not getting their fair due. In such situations if they are lucky enough to get invited to one or two common weddings it would be an ideal situation. At one go they could meet as many of them as is possible.

Thus your battery gets easily recharged before you start to realise it.

There is atleast one negative side effect. Atleast  to the weighty ones. It takes months for one to get rid of an extra two kgs of weight, what with strict self-denying dietary schedule and unrelenting work-out schedule in rain or shine. But it takes only a wedding or two in the family and one ends up gaining atleast five kgs.

But then that is an entirely different story.

I am reminded of a wedding that took place some forty years ago. It was a wonderful reunion for many. As is usual on such situations one girl lost a screw of her golden ear ring and every one started looking for it and in vain. After reaching their places people shared their happiness derived in the get together by sending letters to each other. It was a no net world in those times and even phones were a luxury and people net worked with letters sent by posts. One friend asked the brother of the girl who lost her ear ring screw whether she got it back.

காணமல் போன காதணி கிடைத்ததா?

Just a letter changed unwittingly or wittingly perhaps,

 காணாமல் போன காதலி கிடைத்ததா ?

changed the meaning to 'girl friend' instead of 'ear ring'. you can imagine the mayhem that followed in that conservative family.

The joke is enjoyed even today after forty years by all concerned and the letter is kept safe as a treasure.

While talking on the positive side effects of weddings let me recall one more rather two more incidents that took place some time ago.

One of my relatives, a young man just married went to collect a parcel containing home made instant food mixes sent by his mother through a friend staying near his place. He had met the friend or the family earlier and on reaching their home asked for the friend. A teenaged girl who opened the door on hearing the calling bell called inside, "amma, one uncle has come to meet you." Actually it is the custom of youngsters in many families to call a married man uncle 'and' a married woman 'aunty'. So no offence was intended.

But then my relative got a shock of his life. Though past teenage, he never in his wildest dreams imagined to be addressed as 'uncle' by a teenager. Till date he is keeping the parcel untouched.

This man came to attend the twin weddings I mentioned earlier. On the wedding eve some friends of the bride spent time with the bride blissfully unaware that time was passing by. Soon it was 10 in the night. A taxi was called.  The girls hesitated to go by themselves and face their parents' wrath at such a late hour asked if someone could escort. This man and his friend were standing nearby and I asked if one of them or both could oblige and they happily consented. But alas, the girls would not have them. They could not be seen returning close to midnight with young men. "Can you please send some 'uncle-types'?" one of them asked and got her request conceded.

I turned to my young friend apologetically but was surprised at the happiness in his face. It turned out that the humiliation he suffered when a teenager called him 'uncle' was wiped out now that a young girl refused to take him for an 'uncle'.