The Wedding

New beginnings

The months before D-Day flew by and before I knew it we were back in Delhi for the big event. We again stayed with Shelley and Bunny Majithia as they had offered to host the marriage in their beautiful house.

The seventeenth of December found me quite emotionally numbed out. I could hardly believe that after all the troubled times in my life I was actually getting married! The beauticians had been called to the house and I remember staring at my reflection in the mirror while they were dotting up my face, and thinking that may be I could still call it all off. My mother assured me that doubts and fears were normal apprehensions to feel at this point of time, since it was an unknown and different life that I was heading towards. I insisted on wearing the same exquisite sari that she had worn at her wedding to my father in 1954. She had sported a gorgeous matching cape with her ensemble twenty eight years earlier, which I had cut up to make my blouse.

We had arranged for the registrar to do the needful at the house itself and a strange little man  showed up punctually on the dot of six. The 'baaraat' was also thankfully there on time and we began the practical ceremony that entails a civil marriage. We were each asked if we were over eighteen years of age, if we were related in any way and if we were of sound mind and body. Then we had to sign the legal document and were declared husband and wife! 

My mother-in-law's only request was that we exchange 'jai-malas' after the ceremony, to which we happily obliged. After that was the usual round of photographs, hugs, kisses and congratulations as  the evening went by in a surreal blur. The Sud family was and is a large and complicated one, and meeting every one was a completely confusing experience. In fact it took me years to sort out who belonged to whom and how they were related.

I must admit when it was time to leave and I hugged my father goodbye I promptly burst into tears. That at least was what a good Indian bride was expected to do and I followed this custom before climbing into the car and waving goodbye to everyone as Mrs Eva Sud.