Divya’s House
Divya’s wedding was on
Saturday, so I planned to go down on Thursday afternoon and stay till Sunday
morning. The wedding would go on through most of Saturday night, Divya had
said, and there was the mehndi and sangeet on Friday evening.
So on Thursday morning,
after a leisurely breakfast, I sat on the floor and pulled out the suitcase that
contained my fancy clothes to see what I would wear. I had three choices for
Saturday evening: a dark red silk saree, a black chiffon sari with blue sequins,
and a traditional Assamese muga mekhela
sador. I realised I needed to try on the blouses.
I tried the black one
first: it was so tight I was afraid it would tear if I kept it on any longer. I
hurriedly pulled it off and tried on the red cotton. This was easier: though it
wasn’t much less tight, the fabric was stronger so it would probably last
through the night if I held my breath and didn’t move my arms.
“And if you don’t eat more
than a few mouthfuls at the buffet,” reminded Mandakini.
“Fat chance of that,”
retorted Miki.
The red silk blouse was too
small even to squeeze on. All these blouses had been stitched back when I was
in college in Guwahati: I hadn’t needed to wear sarees after I came to Delhi. With
the cotton blouse I could wear either the red silk or the muga. The red silk had been a gift from Ba to wear at her wedding:
I hadn’t worn it since. I caressed the muga
with the bright red flowers: Aruna mami had
woven it and given it to my mom as a wedding gift. Age had mellowed it and made
it softer and more yellow.
I put aside the mekhela sador to take to the wedding. Now
I needed something for the sangeet.
Not a sari – something I could dance in.
I looked through my stack
of salwar kameez, trying to find
something dressy enough. This was much more difficult, because all of them were
more work wear than anything else. At the end of my hunt, I found two that
would remotely do: a golden-beige kameez with blue embroidery that I paired
with a blue churidar, and a white
sleeveless one with white lace and embroidery that came with a shimmery white dupatta and white Patiala salwar. Both were barely worn, but I had worn the beige one
in office just a couple of weeks ago, so the white one it was.
“I’ll look totally out of
place among all the bright shiny clothes,” said Mandakini.
“Actually, that’s a good
thing,” said Miki. “I’ll stand out.”
I packed my clothes,
showered and got dressed, and called Divya to tell her I was coming over. She
promised to meet me at the bus stop.
I hadn’t been looking
forward to the long bus ride, but I actually enjoyed it. It was afternoon, so
there weren’t many passengers, and I got myself a window seat near the back.
The weather had suddenly got warmer: it was sunny, but a cool breeze blew in
through the window. My hair would be a mess by the time I reached, but I stuck
my head near the window and settled down to enjoy the ride.
The bus took me on its
rambling way through the old Mehrauli road and South Delhi. We passed by farms
and I drank in the greenery with pleasure. I got off at Munirka to change
buses. I waited for half an hour, letting the first two buses for my
destination go as I couldn’t see any empty seats. I bought a glass of sugarcane
juice and sipped it happily. I sat at the bus stop and watched the traffic go
by. It was such a lovely day and I was so glad to be in Delhi again that I
didn’t mind waiting.
Finally a bus arrived that
was relatively empty, and I hauled myself and my bag up on it with a sigh of
relief.
I got off the bus and
settled down on the bus stop to wait for Divya. I didn’t have long to wait
before I saw her black Santro turning into the street, and I stood up and waved
furiously.
Divya didn’t seem to be in
the best of moods. I barely shut the car door before she moved the car forward,
and I fumbled for the seatbelt.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“Oh, everything’s in a
mess,” she wailed. “The photographer is sick, my clothes aren’t ready, my best
friend isn’t coming, and my mom is driving me crazy.”
“Why isn’t Sheena coming?”
I asked, focusing on what seemed to me the most important issue.
“I don’t know!”
“Didn’t she say?”
“No! Yeah, she did say…
She said she can’t make it. One of her in-laws is ill: a grandfather, I think.”
“I suppose she couldn’t
help it, then…”
“But it’s my wedding! She promised she would come. I
haven’t seen her in over a year!”
“I’m sorry she can’t make
it, sweetheart. But I’m here, and your family is here. It’ll be fine.”
She scowled.
I quickly moved on to the
next item, figuring that only distraction could help her with the first one.
“About the photographer,
can’t you get someone else?”
“Yeah, well, he’s referred
me to someone else and that guy has agreed.”
“So that’s one problem
solved, isn’t it?” I said cheerfully.
“God only knows what he’ll
be like,” said Divya darkly. “If he was free and agreed to come at such short
notice, he can’t be very good.”
“Don’t worry, I’m sure
he’ll be fine. But what’s wrong with your clothes?”
“I had given the tailor a
heap of clothes, with instructions about what I want before the wedding and
what will do even if he delivers it later. The clothes for the wedding came
yesterday, but my wedding lehenga was
not among them.”
“Oh! But wasn’t your lehenga ready-made?”
“Yes,” she said slowly and
loudly, as if I were deaf, “but it needed some alterations. I wasn’t at home
last evening when the clothes came – I was off meeting the mehndiwallah. And my mom did not check whether all the clothes were
in there. By the time I got home and discovered it, the shop had closed. I went
down first thing this morning, and at first they couldn’t even find it.”
“Oh god.”
“Finally they found it
after half an hour – it was in the wrong heap, apparently.”
“So now what? They’ll
deliver it by tomorrow, right?”
“I’ll kill them if they
don’t.” She looked like she meant it. “I’ve told them I’ll kill them if even a
stitch is out of place. It has to be perfect the first time, we don’t have time
to re-do it.”
“Relax, I’m sure it’ll be
fine.”
“So tomorrow afternoon,
you and I are going down to the tailor’s. I’ll try it on, and if there’s
anything wrong I’ll make them fix it right away. And then we have to come back
and get dressed for the sangeet.”
“That
sounds like a plan,” I said brightly, but her frown remained intact.
Divya had turned into a
small lane, and then we were at her house, marked by a name plate at the gate
that proclaimed, in golden letters on black, “Mr Manoj Joshi/Mrs Aradhana
Joshi”. She manoeuvred her car into a space that had looked smaller than the
car. When we went in, Aunty insisted we sit down to lunch as soon as I had
washed up.
At lunch, Divya regaled me
with everything else that was going wrong with her wedding.
“Nice weekend this is
going to be,” remarked Miki.
“Shut up,” said Mandakini,
as I put on my most sympathetic face and listened to Divya.
6 comments:
Hey look, it's up early!
I'm off on vacation late next week, so the next post will be up before Friday morning.
What are your plans for the rest of the year?
nice to see miki n mandakini back in their elements. n sugarcane juice reminds me of warm evenings, cool glasses and a cooler group of friends to drink it with, back during my undergraduate days :)
m counting down to the time i'll be able to take a vacation, next july seems sooo far away
Obelix: Little-known fact about me - I can't stand sugarcane juice. It makes me want to puke. My beverage of choice in the Delhi summer was Mother Dairy's namkeen lassi. (And I'll be in Delhi on Christmas day! Yay!)
I haven't had a proper vacation this year. I took three weekends off: Tarkarli in April (http://www.unmana.com/2010/04/last-weekend-at-tarkarli.html), Bangalore in August (http://www.unmana.com/2010/08/bangalore.html), and I visited the Guy once in Hyderabad after his soon-reversed move there.
This will be my first week-long vacation in over a year, and I'm very excited!
Hey Unmana, im loving your blog. Got hooked to voices in my head and read all the chapters in two days. Now its hard to wait for the next chapter. :)
Orange Girl: Thank you. So you're the one who's been single-handedly driving up my blog stats.
New post by Friday morning, but then no more till the 1st. I'm going on vacaaaaaaaaaaaaaaytion!
I was away myself! Have a great holiday.
Poor Divya- I hope things go off smoothly at her wedding!
Post a Comment