wedding plans (short story)

"Am I going to get any tea or not?"  Shreya looked at the vessel after hearing Sachin's voice. The water had boiled down to half the vessel.  She was thinking of something else, although her gaze was at the tea vessel.  She was not able to ignore Anjali's cries for help.  "If Manish goes away, what am I going to do.  It will be impossible for me to carry on."  "Anju, you yourself have chosen to tread on this path, now you can't blame him.  You never wanted to be bogged down with relationships or responsibilities."  Shreya wanted all this to relate to her, but was hesitating.  Ultimately she came out of her senses and noticed that Sachin was getting restless for tea.  "What would you like to have for breakfast," she asked.  "As you wish.  Whatever you like or that which can be readied easily."  "So cornflakes or halwa?"  She teased.  "Not so simple, my dear.  Your alu paratha tastes yummy, don't you think?"  "I thought Sunday is a lazy day for you ," Shreya again teased.  "Waking up late in the morning and having hot tea and alu paratha made by you makes my Sunday special and I enjoy it," Sachin surprised Shreya, "Who rang up so early in the morning?"  "Anju called" replied Shreya, "Won't you ask why?"  "Well she is a like a sister to you, maybe that is why."  "Not a sister like, but a true friend."  "But I take her as my sister-in-law," replied Sachin, "Each individual should respect the relation the person is involved in and not to take it for granted.  Don't you feel strange in changing the relation from a friend to a sister and then back to friend again?"  "What's so strange in it?" Shreya shot back, "a friend is a friend and not a sister or brother.  Can a husband and wife say they got a brother-sister relation?"  Sachin said calmly, "Honey, Manish and Anjali are good friends of ours and you know that, don't you? and they have always maintained that relationship with us.  So, it's our responsibility that we help them solve their problems."

Shreya and Anjali were the best female friends.  Anjali was the most busiest person during Shreya's wedding.  They bonded so strongly that others thought they were sisters.  Anjali used to tease Sachin not to bother her sister too much and Sachin would bow in obedience.  The friendship began to sour when Anjali admitted her love for Sachin's friend, Manish.  In fact, the bone of contention was when they both decided to live together without marrying.  "But this is quite risky, Anju.  If you love each other, why not marry?" Shreya sounding cautious had asked.  Manish's and Anjali's family were too not happy with this decision.  Now it was the onus of Sachin and Shreya to convince them to get married.  Shreya was also not able to decide how to explain the situation to Anjali's family members.  Anjali was not happy with Shreya's constant interference in her life and this had created a rift between her and Shreya.  Looking a little sullen while having breakfast, Sachin consoled Shreya, "don't worry about them.  They need to handle their own situation."  "How can you say that?" Shreya retorted angrily, "I can never forget the strong bond we shared at one time.  Do you remember, I was pregnant and you were away on tour.  The last two months I was advised complete bedrest by the doctor and nobody from your or my family had come to my help.  At that time, she was the one who took great care of me.  How can I forget that and you expect me to let go off her? that's impossible."  "We both are going to her place in the evening,"  Shreya announced as she got up from the table.

That evening, when they reached Manish and Anjali's place, they were stunned to see the house to be spick-and-span.  Earlier it used to be a complete mess, but now it was decorated beautifully.  For a while both of them seemed perplexed and could not understand what to say.  Ultimately, little Mallika broke the silence by making her presence felt.  "How can someone love a kid when it is born after so much labor," Anjali had asked Shreya to which Shreya had replied, "I will ask you the same question when you become a mother."  "I am not an emotional fool to put myself into such situations," Anjali had replied tersely, "I had informed Manish that if he wants me in his life, he should not pressurize me for marriage."  Shreya had forgotten about all this, but when Anjali and Manish had invited them to celebrate their live-in relationship, they both were stunned.  Manish had informed Sachin that much against his own family's wishes, he had come to stay with Anajli.  "Anjali doesn't believe in the institution of marriage and love demands understanding each other, so if she does not wish to marry, so be it."

That day though they felt sorry for Manish, but at the same were angry that he had done away with societal norms and relations just to remain with Anjali.  "Shreya, I am preparing ginger tea," announced Anjali, "you know what I like."  When Anjali returned with only two cups, Shreya asked, "why only two cups? what about you guys?"  "Well, tea causes acidity to Manish, so we stopped having regular one and only drink green tea," replied Anjali.  "Anju, are you sure what are you saying.  I remember your stand of not bowing down to other's wishes, so how come a drastic change?  Is everything alright?"  "No, nothing's right.  It seems Manish may have to marry some other girl as per his family's wishes."  "Oh my God, but why and to whom?" asked Sachin.  "That is not known, though he has said no, but nothing is certain," replied Anjali.  "What do you mean nothing is certain and why is Manish behaving like this? Why the farce of taking care of you?" asked Shreya.  "Shreya, please don't consider his care for me as a show-off.  Until now all was well, but now his sister is of marriageable age and his family wants him to get married first so that no problems crop up when looking for a suitable boy for her."  "Okay, so for his sister's sake, you both need to part ways, is it?"  "Do you think they had settled down in their life?" asked Sachin as he and Manish entered the room.  "My mother has zeroed on some girl and wants me to approve her," replied Manish sadly, "but I told my mother I won't marry anybody else, but Anju doesn't want to trust me.  She thinks I might bow down to my family's wishes.  Yeah, but until Prachi gets married, I will have to stay with my family   It's just a matter of 5-6 months after which I would rejoin her."  Now he turned towards Anju, "Anju, my dear, please trust me.  As soon as Prachi gets married, I will be with you."  By now, Anju had tears in her eyes.  "I will be going home next week and will come back after my sister's wedding and that's a promise," said Manish addressing Shreya, "please convince your friend to trust me.  I am committed to her.  In fact, she now wants to start a family."  Shreya turned to Anjali, "what's with you Anju? you never wanted to marry and now all of a sudden....."  Now it was Sachin's turn to confront Anjali, "such emotional decisions sometimes can go wrong.  What would you do if Manish gets another girl?"  Anjali started sobbing loudly at which time Shreya stared angrily at Sachin and consoled Anjali, "I fail to understand one thing, when you both love each other so much, why don't you get married?  I agree that Manish's family has objections on you both living together without getting married, but why have you all of a sudden starting losing trust in him?"  What followed was a complete silence which broke when Anjali spoke, "honey, why don't we get married?"  Sachin and Shreya were taken aback with Anjali's turnaround.  Meanwhile, Sachin was teasing Manish, "so which girl have  your parents chosen for you?"  At that moment Anjali shot back, "Sachin please.....Manish, we must get married tomorrow itself."  Suddenly she realized that she had overreacted to the situation, "inform your parents that we are getting married in a week.  We will invite each and everyone."  Anjali almost announced her wedding.

The next day Anjali was excitedly talking to Shreya on phone, "I am very happy Shreya.  Today, I am going back to my mother's place.  Now I will return only after the wedding.  I am damn excited.  It feels as if the colors of the rainbow have spread across a blank canvas."  It seemed as if Anjali was in the seventh heaven.  After disconnecting her phone, Shreya noticed Manish was thanking Sachin over and over again.  "I feel very happy for you, ready to do anything for you buddy."  As soon as Manish noticed Shreya, he said,"sorry, please forgive me.  I had to do some clever acting to convince your friend to marry me.  I take full responsibility for her happiness."  "Okay, so that was the gameplan.  At least you could have informed me" replied Shreya to which Sachin added,"Manish's mother very cleverly took part in the whole drama and I must appreciate that."

After Manish left, Shreya recollected all the day's happenings.  It was a warm feeling to note that finally Anjali had got convinced to marry, though sometime ago was just adamant not to marry.  Her line of thought was that every relation brings with it its own responsibilities and its best to keep away from such complexities.   It's better that the relation between a man and a woman leads to a conclusion without which it is meaningless.  Now, I must prepare myself to be a part of the wedding celebrations...

Modern Times

I was getting ready to go to office as usual.  I had put on my maroon shirt and black pant   As soon as I put on my black shoes, my son Rohan remarked, "Oh dad, the shirt and pant do not match.  How can you put on a black pant with a maroon shirt?"  I had never realized that my children were getting older and becoming fashion conscious and in fact were imposing their ideas on me and my wife, Pranita.  "But this is what I usually wear and have been doing it for a long time," I replied.  "I agree dad, but times are changing now and you must dress up like most others do.  It was a different story when you were young.  In your times, perhaps fashion may have not been an in-thing.  Now, people will laugh at you being dressed up awkwardly."  He insisted that I change my blank pant and instead put on some light colored one.  I had no other option but to follow his directives.  When I was finally ready, he said with a beaming face, "there you're, now you look like an executive.  I'm sure today your office watchman will be happy to see you dressed so smartly and will salute you twice."

The same thing was happening with my wife.  The other day, we both were getting ready to go to a party.  As it was mid December and the weather during that period of time in Mumbai is quite pleasant, but not very cold, she had put on a full sleeve navy blue colored top and a light blue colored trousers.  Seeing this my 21-year-old daughter, Rohini, at once got annoyed.  "What's this mumma, is this the way to dress?  You are going to a party and not to any park.  Either you change your top or your trousers.  How can you wear both of the same color?  Change it to some thing contrasting."  So she went inside and came with a black top on.  "That's better," my daughter remarked.  When Pranita started wearing her usual sandals, Rohini  ordered.  "Not those sandals, mumma" and off she went inside to get her own golden colored ones and asked Pranita to try.  "Perfect," she said feeling happy.

When they were kids, it was our responsibility to teach them the good things and the bad things, the do's and dont's, but slowly and surely they were becoming our teachers.  They were telling us what to wear, where to go, when and what to talk and with whom, etc. etc.  It used to be annoying earlier, but now the feeling was creeping in that in a way its good.  They now can understand their responsibilities, can differentiate what's good and what's not.  As time goes on, they are becoming our parents instead of we being their's.  Feeling satisfied with the level of maturity they had achieved, I left for office in the getup advised by my son.

Why I started doing yoga.

The story dates back to 2008.  In that year I had at least four episodes where I had a muscle pull in my waist, you know like a sudden spasm, which hampered my movements like bending and twisting. The pain used to be so intense that it used to become impossible to even sit down in the Indian style toilet.  Also, there would be a fair amount of swelling and a slight warmth in the area.  Now, now, don't you think I am writing down a medical report.  These were the turn of events that used to happen after getting a muscle pull.  Whenever such a thing happened, I used to call my physician friend who gave me injections and some pain killers .  At such times, it was obvious that I take leave from my office and incur loss of pay on account of that.  In such a situation, I used to lose at least two days of office attendance.  The last time I had such an episode was because of a very trivial incident.  After getting ready to go to office, as I bent down to turn on the petrol cock of my bike, I developed this pull.  Since one of my paternal aunts had advised me to attend yoga class as I had informed her of these episodes and I also had checked out on the location of the said yoga class, I straight away went to this yoga class and informed the lady yoga instructor of what ails me.  She told me it would take at least 30-45 minutes for the treatment to which I readily agreed.  I called my office to inform that I would be late as I am at a doctor's clinic.  The treatment consisted of traction.  I was asked to lie down on the floor with my legs resting on the wall, half bent.  One strap was tied to my waist which was then hooked to a clamp already affixed to the wall.  I was made to be in that position for almost 30 minutes which gradually subsided my symptoms.   I must say by the time I got back to my feet, my symptoms were all gone and I could feel the swelling had reduced.  After that I hardly had any pain and could work in the office throughout the day without any discomfort.  The next day onwards I started attending to yoga classes regularly.  I might have been a student of that class for almost six years after which I shifted down south to Hyderabad.  It is for sure that yoga helped me get rid of many chronic ailments or at least they are quite under good control by regular practise.  It is a sincere advise that one must practise regular yoga or any form of exercise to remain fit and healthy.

Its Hyderabad

Okayyyy, so now after thinking many times over and over, I finally moved to Hyderabad.  This is not the first time that I have come to this lovely city.  I came here first when I was just 3 years old as a tourist along with my parents and my elder bro.  At that time, we had visited among other things Nagarjunasagar dam, a lovely place.  I dont know what's the position now, but there was an island in the middle of the dam where you need to go in a motor boat, and you know what, there were hundreds and hundreds of beautiful peacocks all over the place.  I still remember we had such fun clicking them.  And yeah I remember watching the clock in the Salarjung museum which I had a chance to revisit in 1992 when I was here staying in Kacheguda in my student life.  After 1972, exactly 20 years down the line, I landed again in Hyderabad to pursue a course to become a radio officer in merchant navy.  But unfortunately even after spending a full academic year, we could not appear for the exam of that particular course, which is conducted by the Govt. of India, Deptt of Telecom, since our exam forms could not reach Delhi as the plane which was carrying the forms crashed while landing at Delhi airport, so we were told.  Though no one died in the crash, but our forms and our future in merchant navy did die with it.  So I had to return empty handed.  But I must say, I enjoyed my stay in Kacheguda.  The hostel was a dormitory comprising two big halls in which the owner had put out beds and had given lockers to each one of us.  While attending the classes, over a period of time, some of us friends became a group.  There were 3 boys and 3 girls or you could say three couples in one group.  Even after so many years, I still remember each one of their names and we had a lot of fun going to movies, picnic, religious spots, you name it and we had been there, but mostly movies.  After that it was in 2003 that I had come to this city in search of job when I was already into my present profession of medical transcription..  As I do not like to travel alone, I brought along a friend of mine from Nagpur as my wife was pregnant.  Since I had already applied online, the office was expecting me.  After the customary interview and other formalities, my job was finalized.  But I did not joint immediately.  This was in July.  After going back to Nagpur, myself and two of my friends decided to do home based job in the same field at one single location.  So, it was decided that two of us fund PCs and start work at one of us' home.  After working for almost three months, we decided to wind up because the company which was giving us work, did not have much of it.  It was based in Bhopal and its future was in dark.  So, we stopped.  As the third friend did not own a PC, I sold mine to him and finally I moved to Hyderabad in the same office where I had finalized my job.  That was in December.  Since my wife had gone to her native place, Benares, for the delivery of our first child, I came alone here.  As I moved to Hyderabad, my mother was alone in the house and had to manage all the things by herself.  During the course of about four months that I was here, she fell ill, traveled to Baroda for a week as my brother was posted there at that time, and had to deal with a lot many things all by herself.  She suffered quite a lot living alone in Nagpur until the time I was here.  Seeing her plight, I decided to go back to Nagpur to be with her as I could not bear more of her being there alone.

culture shock

The main definition of culture shock is when a person migrates from his or her area of inhabitance to another area which is completely alien to him/her and where he/she finds persons with altogether different lifestyle.  I can say that I experienced a similar thing in my life when I shifted from my city of residence to another for employment purposes.  First it was to Raipur, then in MP, from Nagpur.  The Chhattisgarhi language was totally new to me and could only start to understand a little of it after many months.  Also the food taste was quite different from what I was accustomed to.  The second time it happened in my life was when I shifted to Hyderabad from Pune.  Here again, the only staple diet of the people is idli, dosa, and rice which too I found difficult to adjust to, and not to mention the Telugu language which is quite difficult to understand.

जेव्हा एक व्यक्ती एका क्षेत्रातून दुसऱ्यात राहण्याकरिता जातो आणी तिथलं राहणं खाणं, जिवनशैली त्याच्यासाठी नवीन असतं, माझ्या मताप्रमाणे ह्याला परकीयकरण असे म्हणतात.   माझ्या जीवनात असे दोनदा घडले.  पहिल्यांदा जेव्हा मी नोकरी संदर्भात नागपुरहून रायपुरला गेलो, मला वाटते मला पर्कियकरणाचि जाणीव झाली.  तिथली छत्तिस्गढी भाषा, तिथली राहणी खाणी मला बरीच अनोळखी होती.  तिथली थोडिफार भाषा समजुन घ्यायला मला बराच काळ लागला.  हा अनुभव माझ्या आयुष्यात दुसऱ्यांदा तेंव्हा आला जेव्हा मी पुण्याहुन हैदराबादला आलो.  इथलं हवामान, राहणे , इडली, दोसा, व भात खाणे, ह्या सगळ्या गोष्टींमुळे मला परकीयकरण अनुभवायला मिळाले .  त्याहून कठीण इथली तेलुगु भाषा जी समजायला फारच अवघड आहे.

Letter to the Prime Minister

A letter to the PM


Respected Mr. Modi:

Your idea of Swachha Bharat is no doubt very innovative and a need of the hour, but I very much doubt its success, which I think, you also know.  I think the main reason behind its late success is lack of education in our country.  I always believe that 90% of Indians are bloody illiterates, govt. figures notwithstanding.  What I mean to say is Indians lack civic sense and to teach them such a thing we need to give proper education and inculcate good habits.  I am not saying that I am not in the 90% lot, no, because many times I find myself in such a situation where I have to either throw something by the side of the road or even more attend a nature's call as there are no proper facilities of either a dustbin or a toilet.  I know this is going to take a lot of time, a lot of effort and many more years.

I think it is in the genes of us Indians to litter around and live in filth.  It is a well known fact that Indians who go abroad for greener pastures are mostly brainy guys, "brain drain" as we call it.  But in other countries too Indians are known to litter around.  It does mean that even the most brainy and well educated persons are in the habit of, nay love to live in filth.  It is so much so that that I heard in Singapore the dirtiest area of that country is where the Indians live.

Is there is any solution  to this?  Of course,  there is and that is education and only education.  What I think the biggest factor going against your idea of Swachha Bharat is the indiscriminate  use of plastic bags.  I sincerely request you to completely ban the use of plastic bags in all its shapes and sizes even if that means bringing in draconian laws just like they have in Singapore where a person is fined $500 for spitting in the open.  I know the task is difficult but not achievable.

Regards,

Rohit Badhe

spendthrift

why be a spendthrift? is it wrong if I ask my wife to save and spend less? are we earning millions per day? once in a while its okay, by why every now and then? cant she control her desires? I do think having self-control is the biggest achievement, that's what I learned when I did vipassana course.  that was an eye opener.  there he taught us to meditate, to concentrate, to control ourselves, self-control.  a few days back I quarreled with my wife over buying ice-cream.  she was supposed to buy only one for our son, but when she went inside the shop, she bought 2 family packs.  the shopkeeper told her its buy one get one and in fact I know that brand, Amul, its not buy one get one.  even if you buy one pack, you get it at half the amount, no need to buy two.  they do sell a single pack.  but she being spendthrift and very headstrong, why would she listen to me?  I dont say that she doesnt indulge in saving for our future, for our son, but still whenever you can get a chance to save, do it.  have self-control.  in fact in addition to the two packs, she bought one single cup for our son who finished it by the time we came home.  anyways.

so, its a fact that workload has gone down where I work presently and now its time to shift.  i called up my previous employer in the evening and he has called me tomorrow to have an informal chat.  let's see what it turns out to be.  what i heard from my colleagues from the earlier employer that workflow has increased here and he is adding persons to boost his strength.  the only deterrent may be a longer travel as they have shifted from where the office was located to a little distance away which may be a little far for me.  but if he agrees to employ me on the previous terms and conditions, i dont mind the distance to travel.   my condition remains no night shift and fixed salary plus incentives.  i do hope he agrees to it.