24 Friday Jan 2014
Posted in 55 word fiction, Marathon Bloggers
Surrounded both side by her sisters, under the pholon ki chadar held by her brothers, eyes shy but full of dreams she was slowly walking towards her life and then the unimaginable happened. She slipped…
Smiling to herself, she decided that its gonna be only flats only for the d-day. Thank god for some dreams
11 Friday Feb 2011
Posted in Project 365
There is something about this picture that I love the light balance in the picture I think… clicked on my cousin’s engagement day
10 Thursday Feb 2011
Posted in Project 365
Tags
bride, indian wedding, photography, picture, project 365, wedding
The below picture is actually the bride’s lehenga… yeah yeah is packed in a crazily expensive packing and style for gifting… such are the ways of an Indian (may be Delhi) wedding these days… It looks super cute there is no doubt about that but I was super shocked to see so much money and effort and being spent on packing… we indeed have come a long way as a nation from when the bridal attire just used to be put in the bride’s jholi (lap)
Do u think this qualifies as Thursday Challenge the theme of which is Textures this time….
08 Tuesday Feb 2011
Posted in Project 365
There is a tradition in Punjabi weddings (which has now virtually being taken up by all north Indian weddings) that the bride is brought to the mandap under a pholon walli chaddar (a flower bedsheet) which is basically flowers weaved together and than tied in a frame to resemble a bedsheet.. It just looks lovely to see the bride walking under it the chaddar being held by the loving and proud brothers. And now a days the custom has extended itself to engagements too because of the sheer sweetness of it 
So here is the shot of the chaddar kept in the side before it was put to use along with a vase…
03 Thursday Feb 2011
Posted in Project 365, Thrusday Photo Challenge
So today the theme for the Thursday challenge in RED and this picture I clicked in JagMandir, Udaipur, Rajasthan. Wedding are conducted there regularly and these are remains of the wedding being cleared the next day. Just takes a little time to bring down the place where a couple started a new life, what an irony isn’t it? But then life is all about the memories that one collects at places and yeah pictures too 
18 Thursday Feb 2010
Posted in personal
Tags
PS: A long post ahead but if reach the end I can assure u will be laughing out aloud 😀
I have read tons and tons of Birth Stories and I love reading them… Absolutely heart them but somehow I haven’t read many of the wedding stories around 😉 apart from ofcourse the lovely and most hilarious account by Ritu of her elder son’s wedding written in true Ritu style 😀
As most of us know our dear friend Prats is the latest one to get into the wedding routine and just before he was going for his wedding, we were chatting on how difficult it is to get married and here I just mean the ceremony what happens next my friends most of you know 😉 Tons of people to keep happy, both bride and groom have some rituals and way of doing things and man it is such tamasha most of the times… While we were discussing all this Prats asked me about my story and how we met etc… though that is something I dont want to put on the blog… let me share with u what happened in the ceremony which was truly bound to be a true blue 2-state kind of wedding… A loud and fun loving typical punjabi family meets a very simple and conservative Telugu people….
So here this post is specially for you Prats… wishing u a very happy and long married life ahead and hoping to hear a lot of stories about your wedding when you are back now that u are already back
As I mentioned above ours is a mixed culture marriage and the first meeting that parents had both of us were very clear that we are headed for trouble… I had seen a Bengali and Telugu marriage gone crazy and all that happened at the wedding was arguments on what should be done how, inspite of the fact that they had two weddings and all I could remember was that marriage when we were talking about the formalities to be done. And as far as N is concerned the smaller the ritual the better for him… the best that would have worked for him would have been Court Marriage but alas the parents didn’t give in to that.
With all the above in mind and also the fact that wedding was to be held in Bangalore and my parents lived in Delhi… Also the fact that N just has a sister who is always running madly busy with her office, home and kids and whose views on anything religious or ritual are a 180 degree opposite from N, we both decided to take the wedding arrangements in our hand. And I think I am yet to meet another couple who has done that.
6 months of wedding planning was totally tiring but what fun it was… I think it brought us closer as a couple. We took some major decisions together as a couple, we started to understand the likes and dislikes (said and unsaid) of each other deeply… Where will the wedding be, what kind the wedding be, what will be the menu, the reception, the person who will do the mandap, the person who will decorate the car basically all decisions were taken by us were taken by constantly consulting elders 🙂 and being together
We had all the numbers the details of everything and the day before wedding we were like enough is enough… we need to enjoy our own wedding 😉 and thought of handing over the stuff to various people around…. so the duties were handed over… most went off well but a few were really memorable….
The wedding was supposed to happen at 10:45am in the morning… gosh for a punjabi family its a crazy time… we can’t imagine getting up so early, gossiping (yeah thats the most important part of a wedding whether you agree or not 😉 ), dancing (a punjabi wedding infact nothing punjabi can’t happen without it), the various ceremonies list go on… all of us were freaked out (ofcourse I had made peace with it as I had searched to 10 parlors who will make me ready by 8:30 am as a result I had a parlor far far away from the venue )… After the elders cribbing and making it peace with it… lot of cranky sleep deprived souls, we had slept at like am in the night after a rocking mehendi night (but thats another post)…. hey did I tell you that sleeping early in the night is the biggest crime one can make in Panju wedding 😉 we started at about 6 in the morning for the ceremonies… and about 7 a very dear friend P (u are reading dear?) and my uncle N were packed off to the venue to oversee the mandap making arrangements and a family friend R took me to the far far away parlor…
I reached the parlor and got a lashing for being a late and was hurried to the chair to get decked up… and ting the cell starts ringing, its P saying the flower guy hasn’t turned up 🙄 :shocked:
P: Monika the flower guy hasn’t turned
Me : shouting what??????????????
Parlor Aunty : sit straight, I am doing your hair
Me : :ignoring her: What are you saying, what do u mean he has not come? the mandap should be almost ready by now…
P: yeah thats why I called you and he is not picking my call
Me : shouting louder giving the PL heart attack… what?????????????????????
PL : sit straight the makeup will all go bad..
Friend R : very sweetly and caringly give the phone to me let me talk, I will settle the matter
Me : ok whatever
After two minutes R explained P to call N (uff what drama it is becoming) and try and do something and PL started working on beautifying me again and just that the cell rang and this time it was N
With a deep breath and a resolve to keep calm and I picked up the phone
N : the flower guy is not picking up the phone, should we get married without mandap..
there he broke my resolve of keeping calm… 😦
Me : what do u mean? do u know what you are saying
By this time the PL had given on me and just stood staring me…and I like gestured her to give me 5 minutes to settle all this…
After 15 mins of crazy calls from 3 people to the flower guy he picked up the call and said he will come in 15 mins… he was drunk and out sleeping or so he said…
He arrived after 30 minutes and when people reached the venue the mandap was still getting build… Gosh… there was a flower chaadar he was supposed to bring along for me to walk under to the mandap and that was getting weaved… the state of mom’s tension is something I can’t even describe… and the minute I arrived at the venue and looked at N both of us broke in a laughter and I had well meanings aunts asking me to shatup and the other side aunt’s give me stares as if N is marrying a mentally retarded girl
Meanwhile another friend A was assigned the task of bringing the pandit to the hall at the correct time (BTW did I mention I got married by a female pandit, doesn’t it rock) and he got late by about 20 minutes which created another scene of panic in the hall as for my sil the mahuratam time (the time to put the mangalsutra) was like something which should not be missed at all and the time period for that mahurtam was exaclty 5 mins… giving everyone of us heart attacks…
Luckily by the time the pandit arrived, the mandap was also starting to look a little mandap ready…. and my sil was ok lets get started that came another problem… none of my brothers or sisters had arrived at the venue, they were in the car which was stuck in infamous Bangalore traffic and they are the ones who was to hold the flower chaadar and take me to the mandap… makeshift brothers were called (basically anyone who was around and male I thank God no one picked N to hold the chaadar) and I was taken to the mandap and the ceremony begin… with uncle N wearing his night dress and P going off home to get ready…
Hey hold don’t go away there is more 🙂 15 minutes into the ceremony and the mandap fell… can u beat that? this time my brothers who couldn’t bring me to the mandap had to pay for their mistakes and hold the four mandap pillars all through the ceremony 😉 Man it was funny… we should have been tensed but I remember seeing them and a result burst out laughing ok ok I controlled myself 😀 😀
As if all that was not enough we were missing the mahuratum time resulting a very itchy and upset sil for whom it was a question of everything going wrong if we missed that which resulted in her having a brilliant brain wave… what if we skipped all other rituals and jumped directly to the mangalsutra… ok we can’t jump fine lets just do it after the mangalsutra ha ha ha and there started a huge argument again… between my sil and the female pandit…. and let me warn you when two females are in argument everyone should stay away 😉 what sill wanted to do, the pandit will not allow to happen in anycase being a strong Arya Samajain for whom steps are so important… and after a long argument and lot of people using their brain it was just decided that we will keep quiet and do nothing in those 5 minutes.. yay u got it… just sit and yeah pray 😀
uff what a day that was… at the end of it all we were both just glad it was over… and on this day I have just one suggestion to give u all
WHATEVER YOU DO FOLKS NEVER EVER ARRANGE YOUR OWN WEDDING AND IF YOU BE READY TO FACE MUSIC 😀
Edited to Add : I absolutely loved GM’s idea of converting it into a tag… so here it goes… Guys make me proud by making me a creater of a tag he he
Rules
So here are the people I tag
Also BlogAdda has showered me with some love again and this post has been picked for the Spicy Saturday… thank u folks… u rock 😀
24 Thursday Dec 2009
Posted in This and that
Monika's World 