The Wedding Album

For the majority of us, marriage is an event that happens once in our lifetime and is perhaps the most defining events in our lives. For me, it definitely was! It is also generally true that for a majority of us marriage is the culmination of a serious process of match-making. I do recall that when my elder sister was to be married, my parents spent many months searching for the right match. First, the parents take the decision to get their daughter married. The decision is influenced by many factors, none of which we shall discuss here. Once the decision is made, the news is discreetly leaked to near and dear relatives and friends. The strategy behind this leak is to allow relatives and friends to spread the net for known or unknown opportunities. Well, when it finally comes to the wedding functions, the nitty-gritty is discussed between the two families.

Two of the most important aspects of any wedding are food and photographs. There will be no compromise on the quality of food and the spread. Photography is more complex and expensive today than when I got married. There has to be a pre-wedding shoot days before the wedding. The bride and groom to be are taken to exotic locations and shot in a style that matches the latest Bollywood trends. Or, the event planners come with a theme shoot which could be anything from skiing on the Alps, temple theme or even a day in the life of an autorickshaw driver theme! The wedding itself is covered extensively as video cameras follow the couple on a 24/7 basis to capture their every move, except of course private moments that cannot be shot.

Now, let us cut back to my marriage. I was not amongst the lucky ones to have a hassle-free and lavish wedding. My wife and I had to virtually spend tense months to convince our parents to accept our proposal to marry. Elders on both sides were virtually not given any choice to say no. Having crossed this stage, both of us were then involved in a social acceptance exercise within the family ( I am a Tamil Brahmin and my wife a Kshatriya Punjabi), an assignment filled with tension. We could hardly think of event planning and other important stuff that I spoke of. To confess the truth, we were completely unaware of who was preparing what for our wedding. My parents were doing their own stuff and her mother doing her own to the complete exclusion of both the bride and groom.

Our wedding happened in the railway colony community hall near my wife’s house. Some tents were pitched to accommodate about fifty-odd guests. In fact, there were more curious onlookers and passersby strangers at our wedding than actual guests!

A frugal meal arrangement was in place. Pandits from Noth India and South India were present. It was only in the very eleventh hour that somebody asked about the photographer. There was no professional photographer engaged by either of the families.

Thankfully, my brother-in-law stepped forward with his Canon; and there was this friend of mine, Ganesh, who had very thoughtfully purchased a Click camera (black & white only, and not digital) as a wedding present for us. He rushed to a nearby shop and bought a roll of film, loaded it in the camera and offered to capture the important moments of our marriage.

Well, the result of these stellar efforts by my brother in law and my dear friend was that we have at least a dozen clear photographs of our wedding! Out of these, there are about seven post-card sized colour photos ( thanks to Canon) and five stamp-sized black and white photographs (thanks to Click). I will not blame my friend Ganesh for most of his photographs getting exposed and feel thankful for the five surviving ones. How and who ordered the stamp-sized wedding photos is still a mystery I am trying to figure out.

All said I have no regrets. Even today, we very proudly exhibit these surviving photographs, now a pale and faded version of their original and resplendent self, to friends and relatives visiting our humble abode. I do my best to cover their embarrassment ( not mine) by regaling them with this story. These photos are part of our family treasure.