Counting Days…

The ultimate marriage date was coming close. Preparations were going on. Indian marriages have lots of rituals before marriage. Those rituals started with a bang. We used to practice dance every night. Few years back, it was really easy to get people together, but now everyone is grown up. They have their own life and hence become difficult to get them together. Anyway, we still got a bunch of people to rock the stage. As per tradition, we asked everyone who would like to perform, some said no and others yes. Eventually, we had around 13-14 performances which were enough for fun.

I guess, I skipped some rituals before dance night. The first was “Jawara bona”. Plant wheat seeds, which are then considered as Goddess. By this date, house was filled with many guests. It’s considered good, people are taking time off to be in the marriage, to celebrate. Even with recent trend, there were enough guests. In night time, we used to have formal dance practice, followed by dinner and free form dance.

The second ritual was Haldi (Turmeric). It is applied 5 days in advance and then every day until marriage. It brings out natural color of skin and considered good. From this day onwards, the bride and groom are considered godly and are not supposed to do any of the household chores. It’s awesome. You are not even supposed to take water and drink on your own, someone will hand it over to you, quite interesting.     

The 3^rd ritual was Mehandi (Heena). A temporary tattoo applied to all the close family members. It was not applied on me as it was scheduled the next day being the Groom.

4^th comes a special one-which announces that marriage is near is Mata Poojan. All close family members’ visits a temple and worships Goddess and invite them to the wedding. It was cool, me and many family members gathered on this day. It was just 2 days before marriage, hence most of the people were there. We went temple dancing and came back the same way. We even danced in the temple.

Then mehandi was applied on me. It’s good to take some rest after that, so that we are not disturbing the wet tattoo and allowing it to dry for better color. The longer it stays, better it becomes. I also applied some oils on top, so that it remains intact. It’s said that more color means more love. Looks like it might be true.

In the evening, we worship the God with dance and colors. I was still sleeping by this time. Relatives woke me up and called down. It was a colorful atmosphere; everyone was dancing and blowing color.  Those are the best times in anyone’s life. This is the 5^th ritual, known as Satsang.

At first, there was no plan of dance night (Mahila Sangeet). Then we booked a small hall and in the end it was decided to take it to another level and book hall in the marriage garden itself. The hall was small, so people gave all their attention on the performances. Sounds like blessing in disguise. There were plenty of people even for the dance night. We tried to keep it small, but even these few people were enough to fill the hall completely.

Home Sweet Home

Dedicated to people of my age...
Best of luck.

It has been more than 3 years that I have left my home sweet home. It has been more than a year that I have left India. May be it was right time to meet and greet everyone at home. Many things have happened in past year, some are good, others bad. May be it was right time to take all those in. Many things lined up for future. May be it was right time to understand those. All these feelings arouse when you are at a prime age. In case you are staying away, things grow at rapid rate. There are many things/situations that today's youth has to go through. Two of them are listed here.

Shadi (Marriage): That's the hottest topic, I ever heard in India. Especially relatives do their best in match fixing. Thanks to all of em. Everyone will have at least one contact with an eligible candidate.

Whereas youth have no idea, what's going on? They understand that it's high time, that thy should settle but they gets afraid with the Shadi word itself. They want to live their life before getting settled. Even if they are earning in lakhs, they are afraid of the current economy. They also think that marriage will bring additional responsibilities. Also they need candidates who is perfect in many criteria such as working/non working/business, location, community, even sub community, culture and more. It's like the person should satisfy all the parameters to be eligible. Note, they apply in Love marriages as well, just that criteria s are different there. Even then it takes a lot of time of time to finalize, as it's a matter of lifetime. 

Job: If you do not get job, its a problem. if you do get job, you want to switch. If you have already switched, you want to go towards Startup. If you are in startup, you want to go in Business. In spite of all these, there are those as well, who are still struggling with their exams. So basically you are in a confused state of mind, wherever you are. One thing is for sure, wherever you are you want to move ahead from it. You want some change in life. Change is inevitable. Also you are afraid of the change, which reduces your speed of moving towards it. Above factor also contributes in this change. As per my thought, all of us need change and should bring it once in a while. For example, if you are working somewhere you should take leave from it at least a month in a year. You should meet 1 new person at  least in a week.

Funny thing among all these is, we might think "OK, we are in a job. We should settle now and get married". But the real thing starts right after that. Our society wants more now. First they want us to get good marks, then good job, good girl and now they want a good kid.
If you listen to me, I would say...
Their is no stoppage in this life, it wants more out of you. Just try to keep yourself on track. Take the life as it comes. STOP once in a while, take a deep breath, see around yourself and then move ahead. Else life will go very fast and you won't get time to live it. Life is precious. Stop surviving, start living.