The one with a lot of drama

~ We are about to finalise an apartment for my parents, one with a large compound with lots of benches where you can sit and chat. We – the OH, Amma and I – are contemplating this, sitting on one of these very benches. Suddenly, we hear a policeman shouting: ‘This guy has drunk poison. He wants to die!’. A man appears behind him, in one of the windows of the high-rise looming behind us, looking sad and defeated.

~ I am in a huge group of Sikhs standing outside a huge marble-floored gurudwara in Delhi. They know that I am a Hindu, and I do too. I feel safe and secure in their company, and they seem to have accepted me too. We all shout ‘Jo bole so nihaal, sat sri akaal’ and bow down in front of the gurudwara.

~ In a typical Indian, arranged marriage girl-seeing scenario, a guy comes to see me. I know zilch about him, except his name, and he doesn’t know anything about me either. He hardly talks to me when we are left alone. He tells his parents and mine that he is ready to marry me. Our families are beside themselves with joy, and fix an appropriate engagement date. I am left feeling confused, wondering why the guy agreed to marry me even before he got to know me better. I decide to call him and find out if he knows what he has committed to.

~ A scruffy-looking man enters our Ahmedabad home from the back door. He enters my room, and begins to eye the things lying scattered around greedily. His intentions do not seem honourable, and Amma and I ask him repeatedly what he wants. He doesn’t respond for a few minutes, then says he wants to go to an office near our house. We have to show him out forcefully, and direct him to the office he wants to go to.

~ The OH and I are watching a movie with Raj Babbar and Smita Patil in it. Babbar and Patil have been married for a couple of years, but due to certain circumstances, they did not get to enjoy the newly-married phase. Their marriage matured before it was time for it to. Now, things have settled down, and Babbar’s college-going sisters tell Patil to dress up in her wedding finery and relive those beautiful newly-married days again with their brother. Babbar and Patil refuse, saying they would feel awkward doing so, that it has been quite some time since they have been married. The sisters say, ‘But you haven’t experienced those feelings. That means you haven’t lived those days fully.’ I nudge the OH and say, ‘This is exactly what I mean. I want to relive moments from our marriage too. I was too tensed when I got married to you. I want to get married – to you – again, and feel those feelings again.’

~I am getting married in a very pretty, pale pink Lucknowi saree. It is a cotton saree, though, and people are asking me why I am not wearing silk. After all, it is my marriage! I tell them that my husband got the saree for me, that I love it, and that it is far more precious to me than any silk saree could be.

Clearly, my dreams are Bollywood movie plots on their own. I am way more dramatic than I know, I guess.

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