Yesterday, a friend got married to a girl he courted for six years. But his parents were not part of the pheras or the Reception. There were strict instructions from the boy’s father against anybody from the family attending the wedding. His reasoning – Marwaris (boy’s family) and Punjabis (girl’s family) do not marry.
The couple would have got married much earlier but kept hoping that the boy’s father would come around. In the last five years, everyone did their bit to change the father. The boy’s mother pleaded and cried. The boy’s elder brother and wife had marathon talks with the father. The bride and her family visited the boy’s home several times to quell matters. The boy’s friends tried speaking to the father on numerous occasions but everything came to nought yesterday – when the boy got married without any of his family members.
Well, not really.
Thanks to the boy’s mother, it ended up as one happy wedding – only without the father. On realising that there was no way her husband was going to relent, the mother simply took over the reins. As soon as her husband left for his workplace, she started slipping out of the house for her son’s. (I forgot to mention that after one of the many tiffs between father and son, when the father threatened to leave home if the marriage went ahead, it was the son who left home for a rented apartment close-by).
Once there, the mother began making all the preparations for the wedding. She instructed her older son and his family to leave home a week before the wedding on the ‘pretext’ of a holiday and stay with her younger son. She personally invited all relatives, warning them keep her husband out of the know-how. She went shopping for clothes, jewellery, wedding cards – with the son, to-be daughter-in-law, both, and sometimes alone. The week before the wedding, she made sure her son’s home was packed with relatives and well-wishers who sang, danced and cooked good food.
All this she did between 10.00 am and 5.00 pm. Because after that she had to quickly slip back to her own home and act like she had spent the day just lazing around.
The muhurat was at 2.15 am and the day’s ceremonies (primarily haldi) began early. The mother organised all the different rituals, danced, played the dhol. She even helped dress her son. The baraat was at 6.00pm. At 5.00pm, the mother blessed her son and left his house for her own. Later, she greeted her husband like usual – with a cup of tea and a warm smile.
All evening, she called her son’s friends to check if everything was okay. Next day, she was back for the remaining ceremonies but only till 5.00pm.
The father still does not know. Mothers says: “All will be ok soon.”