Wedding has become part and parcel of life now-a-days rather than a mere celebration. Even ads are now advising parents to invest more for their child's marraige.A year ago I thought wedding was just an affair of meeting relatives again(oh! my god,not again), eating good food and enjoy the days. Most of my friends and me sometimes, attend a marriage for a sumptuous meal and the variety items being served. I never thought of the girl and the boy, their feelings and especially the feelings of the girl's parents and their happiness when their daughter gets married. But this changed a year ago after my sister got married. Mission was accomplished but not without obstacles and compromises.

The feeling of a marriage being a sacred ritual became stronger when I was a close spectator of my sister's marriage. It's been a year since she got married and she will be celebrating her first anniversary soon but i still can feel the tension of my aunt and uncle from the day my sister got engaged and the happiness and content in their eyes when the sacred thread called 'Thali' was tied around my sister's neck. Daughter's are really wonderful beings in the world who compromise everything for parents before marriage and for husband after marriage. If you don't believe this ask your mother she will tell that. Ask her about her marriage preparations and how the days went by from the day she got engaged to the day she got married. You can see her eyes twinkle when she thinks about those events and those magical moments. It was not like what was shown in the TV soaps and Bolly films where the girl gets engaged, then the mehendi function, a Bollywood song which says the girl is entering a new world, mother cries, father dances and lo! the girl gets married. That's all. How fine it will be if every marriage is in the same way. Behind every successful marriage there lies a trauma of the girl's side to satisfy the boy's side. It's not that the boy's side torture the girl's side with their endless lists but everything is fair in a son's marriage and that's what actually happens in every Indian marriage. Indian marriages depend on how much dowry a girl can give and how much the parents can flaunt because the more you spend the more you can flaunt.


Marriage starts with an engagement invitation and ends with an endless satisfaction for life. But what's important is it brings two families together amongst all the odds. Two people with different cultures and habits is agreeable but two whole families with different habits meeting at one place blessing the bride and groom to live a happy life is really fascinating. That's Indian culture for you. Everything here is fascinating and filled with emotions. The content in my sister's eyes when my Bro-in-law tied her the sacred knot is still vivid in my memory. I know the pain she went through to make this marriage possible in every way. Though it's an arranged marriage my bro-in-law did not accept the proposal, but my sister (I don't know why, may be that's called love) insisted on that proposal. She liked my bro-in-law very much. That was really surprising to me because she rejected many prospective grooms whom my aunt and uncle liked very much. After rejecting many proposals I even thought that she will never marry in her life(which if had happened I would have not had the oppurnity to write about her marrige). But there came a twist in this story when she actually accepted this proposal but the groom rejected it. But being a strong woman she tried hard to make this marraige happen. How it happened is a mystery till date. But let me tell that in the next series because my sister's wedding has many twist tales that I cannot fit it in one series. Let's meet in the next part.