Throughout my adolescence, my favourite novels had told me tales of love... love which invariably culminated in the awesome 'White Weddings'. To me, a blissfully ideal wedding day would've been something like what Meg experienced in The Little Women... a wedding venue arranged in her garden amidst a shower of spring blossoms, handmade white gown and ribbons, bouquets of fresh flowers all around & a hundred crumples in her wedding dress brought about by the hugs of her loved ones... all blended to the perfection of a "moment-turned-eternity"! Such were the dreams of creamy sweet wedding I had grown up with... Dreams which had somehow wiped off my scepticism of Marriage.Before I was anywhere close to being prepared for such a huge event in my life, I found myself waking up to it. I had tossed and turned the entire night of my wedding eve, while sleep eluded me and unknown emotions filled me up. A discomfort too vibrant to overcome... a sadness too deep to grasp. Yet, veiling it all, was a thrill and a warm happiness... feelings I eagerly held on to.
As the day dawned and the too-bright sunrays streamed into the room, I gave myself time to adjust to it all... and waited to simply Feel the moments. Strangely though, I felt nothing! Every drop of emotion seemed to have deserted me... and I was numbed into a state of peaceful nonchalance. I forced myself out of bed and into a room filled with voices and activities. Voices which didn't register in my brain... activities which I was peacefully unattached to! It was as though I was watching someone else hustle through the various rituals of the day. And thus it rolled on... the day at its slowest possible pace... with me gliding through it in my state of calm 'nothingness'.
And then it was time for me to get dressed for the biggest ocassion of my life. The red wedding saari was draped on me by the wedding dressers. And the moment arrived!
I took one look at the mirror.. And then it finally hit me! There were no comfort of familiar dreamy versions of white gowns and wedding cakes. Instead, the reality of the red glared at me! And for the second time that day, I woke up to my wedding!
The brightness of the Red & Gold jerked me away from the cool fictions... to the urgency of the Living Reality. And just as I woke up to its importance, a rush of feelings attacked me all over again.
A blaring red saari with elaborate sequence work was never my idea of an ideal attire. Yet, a part of me which I never knew existed, surfaced and forced me to go the whole way... and abide by the 'Tradition of the Red'. In a moment, the Rituals, the Wedding, the Bidaai... all became so real... and I ultimately blended to be a part of it.
As I stared at the unfamiliar image of myself in glitters and gold, I understood the alterations I was bringing in into my life. I knew I would be bidding goodbye not only to my hometown, my friends and my family... but also to a part of myself which will be forever lost to me.
I wasn't sad... I wasn't happy... I wasn't excited. Even as I smiled at a crowd of faces around me on my wedding evening, I sought to grasp the core of my self. I had always been able to simplify my feelings in a single string of words : When I'm happy, I dance... When I'm sad I cry. However, on my wedding day, I realized a third truth... there are emotions too deep for reactions. Responsibilities too significant to avoid.
At the end of the longest day of my life so far, I went to the mirror one last time. A new girl stared back at me... and for the first time ever, I felt terribly scared! I did my best to change back into comfortable clothes and redo my hair back to its normal setup - anything to bring back the girl I knew and loved for 27 long years...
Marriage, they had told me, invariably brought forth a hundred alterations in life. I never had any qualms about accepting any such changes... for the one I cared for. But they never told me it even altered the girl who would look back at me from the mirror.
I don't know about the frozen white weddings. I don't even know how far things had changed for Meg. But the Red and Gold weddings are unarguably lifechanging events.
(The changes, however, lasted only till the end of my wedding session. Then, in a smooth alteration of roles, out popped the good ol' ME. And the mirrors grow friendlier once more! But even now, a recollection of those few days of alteration is enough to scare my wits away!)
