What happened on May 30?

4 months is too long a break, isn't it? I apologise to all guys who have missed me and I sincerely warn those guys who feel happy about me not writing stupid stuff anymore... "Guys, I'm BACK ;)"

So this is what happens when you have a seafarer husband. When he's at home, you wake up at 7 and you're not back to your room until 3 am the next morning. Now that he's back onboard and I'm back to my home, I'm all set for a new era of my blog. And officially this is my first post as Mrs. A. Congratulate me.  Btw, in the past few days I learned one thing, that I'm so much accustomed to MY computer. Maybe that's why I could never post anything while I was at my sasuraal. Weird huh?

The D-Day

How could I ever keep my blog or my friends here away from the things that happened on the big day of my life. If I ever skip this part of my life, it will sound just like a B-grade movie with a continuity problem. Take it guys, you've no option left.

The most ironic part of my wedding is that I had never imagined my wedding to take place at a temple. Getting registered at a CPI(M) office ...Yes(Infact, I wished for some leftist professor of Victoria College... call it cliche!). Getting married at Railway Kalyanamandapam ...Yes. But temple wasn't really my idea. And that too at Guruvayoor, the most busiest of all temples in Kerala after Sabarimala. There was no plan-B in case he misses me and gets married to another girl. I was also warned by many aunties to keep holding the thali (mangalsutra) after the ceremony, coz you normally don't get enough time to tie it properly.

Anyways on that day, we were supposed to reach Guruvayoor by 8 so that I my beautician aunty would get enough time to dress me up for the 10.30 muhurtham. So I woke up at 3 and got ready by 5. It was for the very first time I wore saree on my own. After about one-hour of posing-for-the-cameras-and-getting-aashirwaad session, we started for Mission Guruvayoor. My very own cousin (remember him from the love letters post), who would have certainly shined as an F1 racer, made us reach Guruvayoor at 7 sharp, almost an hour ahead. Well, I hardly saw him driving because I was busy sleeping on Amma's shoulder.

Even when me and my beautician aunty were struggling with the 6 foot lamba-choudha saree, I overheard conversations between my relatives if my beautician should use Birla Wallcare Putty on my face to make me look OK before the cameras. But I guess, they must have dropped the idea for the lack of consensus. By 10, I got all dressed up.

Even PM of India would envy if he had seen me getting a Z-category protection from my cousins when we walked out of the hotel to the temple. It was such a crowdy place. And everybody seemed to stare at me. And I too was staring at them. And my stare meant the following- "Are you my relative?", "If so,Should I smile at you?",  "Who are you?". When I finally reached the mandapam, I saw A visibly confused. (Yeah, I forgot to tell you that I was wearing lens that day and the only ones who appreciated me doing that was Korattymuthy and Tudymol). When our names were called he held my hands with a whatever-the-heck-I'm-going-to-marry-this-girl look on his face. Who could blame the grooms getting confused on their wedding days.

Thankfully, we had a very elaborate ceremony of wedding. There was not much of a confusion when we were up on the stage. My nightmares of falling down the stairs also didn't come true. Somehow it all went fine.
Wedding is one occassion where you definitely know nobody loses attention for you. Suddenly all of your relatives become friendly. You smile at people who you haven't seen at all. You talk to people whom you haven't heard of. The most tedious task of all -Posing for the cameras with a smiling face. At the end of the day, your cheeks start aching and even if you want, you can't smile.
Another ritual during the weddings is of the relatives feeding the new couple with milk which has sugar and banana slices added. A seemed so comfortable doing that but I was begging to all my relatives not to take spoonful of the syrup. "Cheriacha,  please take just one piece of banana, not two". I still wonder how I managed not going to the loo that entire day.

Horrific times:- After the ceremony we had another task of registering the marriage at the Muncipality office. Waiting there for almost 2 hours, we were running out of time. We were supposed to reach Ekm by 4.30 for grihapravesham. Adding on to that the driver started driving superbly slow. We reached home at just about 4.28. We literally had to run towards the house- my one hand had been held by Paa and with the only left one I was trying to hold my saree. Right when I was getting into the house with that big lamp on my hands, crackers were burst. It was a total dhamaka. Eventhough I enjoyed the warm welcome, my nightmares of dropping things and falling on my big day were still haunting me.

Anyways that was my BIG day. Thought it would never happen. But it has happened and it has been 4 long months after that.

P.S.:- Nothing about the food in this post and that's precisely because I hardly remember its taste. Maybe I never bothered to eat it. I hate the kalyanasadhya of Thrissur and particularly Guruvayoor and I felt sorry that my wedding had to have the same. I hope I can make upto it in my brother's marriage. All I want him is to get married to a Palakkadan girl atleast for a good Palakkadan sadhya.

P.S.S. :- Why is that Hindu marriages don't have the Now-you-may-kiss-the-bride part? So..o unromantic na.

P.S.S.S :- Today is the anniversary of me getting hitched to A. And my husband is hopefully talking about this to the sea right now.

Intro to in-laws

What's the last thing you expect a bride to do? Maybe write a post on the day previous to her marriage, or write a post on the day of marriage? I'm doing the former one, so you can well expect the latter one too from me. Just kidding yaar!! Who says brides are busy these days!

And what better post than introducing my in-laws to my blogworld . I have been quite low about them because of the confusion in naming them, but it would only be unfair if I weren't writing about them atleast today. I'm settling down with "A" for my till-today-fiance-tom-husband. Decent name would be the comment I get, I know. Paa, Maa respectively for my father-in-law and mother-in-law. And No, these names have not been inspired from Paa, the movie. I coined it a little earlier than that. Long back I had heard some girl using "P. Achan", "E. Achan" as phone names for her father and her father-in-law who live in Palakkad and Ernakulam respectively. LOL :)

OK! My bro-in-law, KK ( or Kuttikattil.com). Derived from the very famous malayalam kids show just to remind us that his love interest studies at Kuttipuram. And then Kamini, KK's fiance. There is a big story behid this name. Remember Kaminey, the movie. Our little prankster, who's acclaimed for her hindi knowledge, once accidently pronounced it as Kamini. Henceforth, the name. But the story doesn't end there. KK, another legend in Hindi, continued the same pronounciation until somebody pointed out the mistake. But boys being boys, KK just revealed the first part of the story to me and later on A told me the whole version.


Honeymoon talks:

A :- Which is the one place you want to go to?
Me :- Kolkata it is.
A :- Ok! Do you know it costs very less to travel to Singapore? Do you wanna go there?
Me :- Hhmmmm........only if I go to Kolkata first.
A :- Tell me someother place you want to go?
Me :- Coorg. Heard its a damn good place.
A:-Is it ? Haven't heard of it at all. How about Munnar?
Me :- Munnar...ha...it's also a good place.
A :- Yeah. But it can be costly na.
Me :- Then we can come over to Palakkad and visit Silent Valley and Neliyampathy with our family. It would be a family tour.
A :- No, its our honeymoon!!
Me :- Then I see only one option. Lets put a "Do not disturb" board infront of our room.
A :- Great. Its settled then !

Conspiring against KK

KK :- Chechi, I would throw you out of the house if you don't cook properly ;)
Me:- Acha... you know what I will put salt in your tea.
Kamini :- Chechi, we won't cook fo him at all.
Me :- Beware KK, we will just give you old-boiled-rice and chutney.
Kamini :- Chechi, thats too much chechi. Just give him the leftover water of the old-rice...

P.S.:- I'm getting married tom at Guruvayoor. Everybody are welcome there. Don't come complaining that you missed the function or couldn't locate us. Its bound to happen.

P.P.S :- Felt bad about just one PS ;)

Because We Are Women

"Because women's work is never done and is underpaid or unpaid or boring or repititious and we're the first to get fired and what we look like is more important than what we do and if we get raped it's our fault and if we get beaten we must have provoked it and if we raise our voices we're nagging bitches and if we enjoy sex we're nymphos and if we don't we're frigid and if we love women it's because we can't get a real "real" man and if we ask our doctor too many questions we're neurotic and/or pushy and if we expect childcare we're selfish and if we stand up for our rights we're aggressive and "unfeminine" and if we don't we're typical weak females and if we want to get married we're out to trap a man and if we don't we're unnatural andbecause we still can't get an adequate safe contraceptive but men can walk on the moon and if we can't cope or don't want pregnancy we're made to feel guilty about abortion and... for lots of other reasons we are part of the women's liberation movement."

Written by some unknown author in an international conference, I feel, these have been the most powerful words I have ever come across about the movement. I am not here to accuse all the males on earth for being all those stated above, but it's for sure that every woman has come across each of these people at certain points of time.

A fellow colleague who nags about his female TL for delegating work. The same person working under a male TL who dumps work on him doesn't attract the same kind of attention. A mistake in his fellow female colleague is blown out of proportion than a male colleague.

Rapists walk in the streets head held high, while rape victims are cornered, verbally molested again and again by the society.

You get harrassed in public for questioning a male who had harrassed you in a bus. You get beaten in a bus for asking the change back from the conductor. You get pinched in the back when you go for a movie or travel in a bus.

You're expected not to react.

We call them chauvinist pigs, but who makes them chauvinists?? The mother who asks her girl child to wash her soiled plates and also of her brother. The mother who doesn't let his son wash his clothes. The aunty who constantly reminds a girl that "patni ki jagah pati ke charno mein hain". The woman who is the first one to shout at a rape victim that she's not worthy of living in the world. WE make them chauvinists and we complain against them.

I might as well have been one among crores of women who get silently pinched, harrassed and believe that it was fault and fate. But I always chose to react eventhough it is in the minutest of the minute character.

I might as well have written a blog about some funny stuff but the fact that I'm in the so called "God's own country" and the backseater-pinchers are aplenty put me to think and write about it. Highest literacy rate? Maybe also has the highest registered and unregistered eve-teasing cases. On my first journey from Hyd to Palakkad, I had to take a KSRTC bus from Cbe to Palakkad. While I was getting down the bus, somebody welcomed me back to Kerala by trying my butt. And my thoughts-  if this butt was a removable one, I would have definitely gifted it to that unknown person, if it could satisfy his sexual tendencies even for a few days.

Yeah I'm saying it, don't go by the tag lines, Kerala could be the worst place you visit if you're not of a hi-fi class. It's devil's residence. And I hate to be proud of Kerala.

Female infanticide?? There was a time when I used to sympathise those unborn female babies. Not anymore. Atleast they don't have to see this big bad world which don't know how to respect a woman, they won't be molested, they won't be harrassed for being a girl.

P.S. :-  I still don't understand the meaning of feminism and hence I'm not a feminist. I'm a humanitarian.

P.P.S :- This is my 50th post. Happy 50 bloggy baby!!