Queen Of Blabber* Gets Hitched!!

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                     Queen Of Blabber* Gets Hitched!!

      

   "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife"                                                                                                                     -Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice.

It’s 4:30am on a Wednesday morning, and I’m sitting on a marble bench in the Bangalore Railway station, awaiting my 5 o’ clock train to Mysore- that’s where I moved to in June.. There’s not much action happening today, strangely enough. There’re two dogs fighting over a piece of stale bread, and the sky looks.. well, pink with clouds.  I go to LST in Bangalore. It’s like a prep-school for Law School entrances. Not many know about this, for almost all of India thinks there’re only two professions one can write entrance exams for. Need I even mention which two? 

So my weekly schedule is like this: Leave to Bangalore on Fridays/Saturdays (depending on my class schedules), attend my LSTs, and travel back home on Monday mornings. The rest of the week? I learn music, pottery, baking, and well. I write. That’s one of the plus points of taking a gap year. Not sticking to a rigid routine, detesting mundane schooldays with revision tests and face Monday morning blues. 

Normally, people take a sabbatical from degree courses, or even work. But it’s not an uncommon trend these days for students to drop a year and use this time to decide what they want to do with their life- doctor, engineer, designer, singer, zoo-keeper.. you get the gist, right? (I’m not saying that’s what I’m doing, but.)

Anyway, back to what I was saying. Here I am, listening to Lata Mangeshkar on my walkman (I prefer that to the i-Pod), when this 20 something guy in blue chequered shorts walks by and asks if the seat beside me is taken. I shake my head sideways, and go back to listening to music.  And then the announcer (The South Western Railways make sure their speakers are tuned to blare into your ears, no matter how loud your mp3 player is and believe me, mine was LOUD.)  says: ‘Chennai to Bangalore  train Madras Express is expected to arrive on Platform one, in forty five minutes. We apologise for the delay.’ Or something to that effect. Yeah. That is exactly what a person- who hasn’t slept in almost three days, has been in three states in the past 24 hours, and has been treated like Harry Potter when she returned to her native place after 13 years (I’ll get to that later) – would want to hear. Cheers to life.

                                                       ******

Two days ago....

After tossing and turning in bed for what seemed like an eternity- I can’t get myself to fall asleep in that super soft, springy mattress- I finally decide to get up, when my six year old cousin Oviya crawls into  bed beside me and blares ‘Waka waka heeey heeeyyy!!!’ into my ears. Hello, migraine! *Note to self. Make more coffee today* Clearly, the kid doesn’t inherit her mother’s taste in music. My LST had this Symposium on Law as a career, the attendance to which was mandatory. And I tell you, it was worth every sniffle I endured for having stepped out in the biting Bangalore morning cold. The event lasts until two thirty, after which I grab a quick bite with my friends, and scoot to the nearest bus stop. I get home in the next hour, and drag out my maid- to teach me to ride the bicycle (Yeah- I wasn’t an out doorsey kid. Sue me.), and return after an hour, brandishing the nice, deep gash I managed to give myself, having fallen off the Ladybird.

Soon, I find myself in the hospital, getting a dressing on my left palm (I find it hard to believe one’s palm can bleed SO much in so less time). As I walk back home, my phone rings. The phone call, which practically beckoned my doom. My maternal grandma’s brother-in-law had died. I knew what to do. Call a truckload of relatives and make the announcement.

The next thing I know, I’m sitting on a train, at five in the morning the following day, with a heavily dressed palm,  looking like Spud the scarecrow, having swallowed an analgesic- to keep the pain at bay (the doctor forgot to mention it had the side effects of a horse tranquilizer), with my entire family in tow.

 Ambur. That’s the name of my native village. This is the first time I’m going there in 13 years, and there’s a reason I’ve kept away for so long. I just don’t belong there! At the risk of sounding like a thankless person. Three hours later, I find myself hugging the inconsolable Radha Ma, wife of the deceased man. 

Soon, people walk up to me, asking me if I was Meera, Mala’s daughter. As I nod in confusion, I spotted the one man I dreaded seeing the most. My 24 year old country bumpkin of a 47^th cousin (no offence, Raja), is walking towards me. I try hiding. Too late. He’s already holding my hand. “There’s my wife! How much I missed you! Where did you go off all these years? What happened to your hand, kannamma?!”  Wife? What wife?  “I am so glad you are finally here! Promise you won’t leave me again!!” Wait. What?

                                                         ******

 “So you’ve just arrived from Chennai?” Blue Chequered Shorts asks me. “No, I’m heading to Mysore, the train’s supposedly late” “Yeah.. It isn’t usually this late. I guess there was some kind of  time adjustment issue.” Oh really? I thought it was recovering from a severe hangover from the previous night’s cocktail party in the diesel shed.

 I can’t help being a little grouchy. Given what I had to endure in the last twenty four hours. “What’re you doing, travelling all by yourself this early in the day?” he asks. I tell him why, and he says “Oh! That is so cool! I like travelling myself.. So what, you’ll climb on to a berth and sleep once you get into the train?” Yay. A talker. Just what I need.  I hope he doesn’t whip out a hanky with chloroform and tranquilize me. I nod with a watery smile.

“I’m Mohan.” He says, extending his hand. Sigh. “Meera” I say. We shake hands.  And that, is how, the most interesting, and unforgettable  one hour long conversation in the history of train stations started. Contrary to what I thought, not all strangers who come  and sit beside you at 4:30 in the morning at a deserted railway platform are serial killers. (Later I find out, some of them are perverts, and sick in the head.)  Truthfully, I had a pretty good time. We talk about why snails are considered a delicacy in some countries, the city’s night life, and even premarital coitus(!). He at some point even asked me if I had a boy friend. And strangely, I didn’t find it offensive.  I’m considering giving my nickname( Miss Prudy Pants)  a break. So I ignore the unusual course the conversation takes and just talk. About dating, work, college, travel, life, and how ‘the closest food gets to being vegetarian in Malaysia is beef’.  He then says:  ‘Do you fantasize about stuff?’  Oh yeah.

Why didn’t I see that coming? Of course. He’s a (pardon my language) sleazeball.  I should’ve seen it when he asked me about my relationship status.  I walk away. As fast as possible, and as far as possible. I can hear him in the back ground- ‘Wait! At least give me your number!’ Dirt bag.

                                                         *****

“What. Do. You. Meeeeean. He’s my husband?”  I ask my grandfather, who tries very hard not to burst into another fit of laughter. I have to remind him we’re at a funeral. He solemnly replies ‘It means, you’re married to him, Putta.’ I look around, only to realize everybody else in the immediate family is trying to contain their laughter as well. What is so funny, I ask him. I’m hoping against hope that this isn’t the part where they tell me now that I’m eighteen, my true identity- that of the heiress to the family business (leather goods?) can be only fulfilled if I marry the great grandson of my great grandpa’s business partner. You know, like in those 80s movies.

As it turns out, I got the great grandpa part right. Apparently, some 80 years ago, our great grand fathers had pledged my generation to be united in holy matrimony( yuck!) And since my granddad and grandma moved out of the village as soon as they got married, no one from my family knew about the nuptials. MY (eww) nuptials.  I apparently had a premeditated, arranged, suicide inducing marriage. I wasn’t even there at my own marriage! To some guy I haven’t even spoken to (I’ve only heard that he’s a smothering love struck puppy. And that he was when he was five, he got hitched to some girl he hasn’t seen ever since.  Only NOW do I know that that girl is ME!!).

 There’s this line Katy Scarlett O’Hara says in Gone With The Wind- 'I can't think about that right now. I'll think about it tomorrow.' That is exactly what I said to myself and the next thing I know, I am stuffing my face. I then excuse myself from the lunch table, and run up the mountain and into the forest, Yeah. The forest. My mind is completely blank, and all I could hear was my ‘husband’, running after me, saying ‘wait, love. I’ll come with you’. I give him a death glare and he freezes in his footsteps. I continue running, I don’t look back. I run past the garden, all the way across  the highway, and into the woods.  The afternoon sun is long gone by now, and the sky is completely covered in clouds. I stop to catch my breath after a staggering twenty five minutes (for me, that is a LOT.)  and that, is when I smell the air.

 It smelled like mud. You know, when you water your plants, the dust settles and there’s this heavenly aroma that enters your nostrils?  If this were a mediocre novel, the author would describe the sky as ‘ominous looking, the air heavy and so crisp that it could be cut with a butter knife’.  Even in that horrid situation of mine, I couldn’t help but laugh to myself. At myself, actually. At how awesome and arrogant I was with my ways. How always, I crack the most ridiculous- and funniest of jokes when there’s no one around. Does this make me sound like a narcissist? I don’t mind. After all, I do love myself.  

 As I sit there, giggling like a psychotic fool, I don’t care anymore. I realize there’s nothing to think about. Scarlett, I’m sorry, but I’m not thinking.  It’s  just a stupid Panchayat marriage. It’s not like it’s legal or something. Or at least that’s what I was told when lunch was happening. Raju, was looking at me as though his eye balls were about to fall out of their sockets, and every time I prepared to spit out a mouthful at his face, I told myself. ‘Meera, this is a funeral. Keep calm.  Keep calm’ and that, was how I finished my plate of putrid goo (khichdi). I am awakened from my filmy picture of my not so filmy (more like pandemonium filled)  life, because it starts raining. The heavens sure do have the most perfect timing. No sarcasm. I love the rain. And when I decide, to finally come to my senses, I look at my watch, and that, is what makes me run downhill like a lunatic, laughing, thankful that nobody’s around to put me in a straitjacket.  After all, tomorrow’s another day, eh? Married or not married, that’s another question altogether. 

Song Credits: Hey Jude- The Beatles