Whose BRIDE is it anyway?

A couple of days back, I had reached office , I received a phone call from my friend asking me whether I was interested in attending a colleague’s wedding, which I had conveniently forgotten in the melee of the 4 day long weekend. The marriage hall was identified as Om Shakthi Kalyana mandapam, in South Boag road T nagar.

I hurried my way through the traffic and met my friends at a predefined point, and then proceeded to locate this marriage hall titled “Om Sakthi”. After 10 minutes of “vulture” eye, tactics my friend swooped on the place, where a small board said “Om Shakthi” Manadapam.We parked our vehicles against the adjacent wall and went inside to observe that the marriage had long been over and people were belching there preparing themselves for a god siesta at about 10 30 in the morning. My friend Kishore, the intelligent guy that he is , gave a stunning explanation, that since the marriage muhurtam was at 11 00, they were waiting for the right time to arrive and assemble there

Waiting ?? ok , but that doesn’t mean the hall would have a deserted look.” Anyway, exceptions are in vogue, this season “ that’s what I said to myself and proceeded to search for my colleague “Ramachandran”(whose sister was getting married) who was not to be found anywhere across the lengths and breadths of the marriage hall. Since I had already spent a good 10-15 minutes searching, and was hungry,I decided to go and quench the call of hunger, hoping that “Ramachandran” would turn up to serve me food.That didn’t happen, and I was all to absorbed in having the idli,dosa and pongal drenched in mouth watering Sambhar of a typical “Tam Brahm” wedding.

After having our food, in between the belching, we felt odd that we didn’t know any one in the marriage hall, and there were no signs of Ramachandran.The time was 10 50 am now and as per Kishore’s logic, the bride and the bridegroom must have been on the altar now,but the bride was busy waiting someone after having her tiffin in the same session as us. Since , I had to also return to office,I wanted to get done with gifting the bride and pushing off,but it would’nt sound nice if the gift were to be given to the bride,without she actually knowing us. So we waited, for what must have been another 200 seconds,but seemed like eternity,before I mustered courage to stop this wait any longer.

I went up boldly to the bride and turned around and looked at her with a confident look,and suavely asked her “ U must be the sister of Ramachandran? “ . She gave me a quizzical look akin to a 4 year old boy seeing calculus. I cleared my voice and told that “I am for Sulekha.com and I have been searching for Ramachandran, your brother” , expecting that atleast now, she would put that faint smile that a bell would ring when she hears “Sulekha”, but alas ..she gave me an even more quizzical look, askin to a 4 year old kid in a topless bar. This was it, the height of insouciance, the bride cant be so irresponsible, not even knowing where her brother worked.Before I could figure out what to say next, the bride blurted “ I don’t know Sulekha.com” …..splash..just felt like a squashed tomato hit me and I retorted “ Its not about the company, but its about your brother” .

The bride all of a sudden pressed the panic button when her quizzical looks were spotted by some rather jobless family members who were contemplating when to doze off, with some paan(paaku) stuffed in their mouths. An old man , asked me what I wanted, to which I bluffed “ I wanted to give the gift, but forgot to address all the three gifting people involved” so, with that I bought some time to save further embarrassment , and went immediately to the next set of empty chairs and sat down with my two companions and gave them suicidal looks and asked them whether the marriage hall was the intended one. Just as the Bollywood movies would inspire a “ma –ki –saugandh sey bolta hoon”, Kishore gave me a stern look, to say “he’s absolutely damn sure that it was Om Sakthi Kalyana mandapam”. Having wasted eons chatting in an unknown place,I decided that I would go and check the name of the mandapam from outside, pretending to write the name of the Bride on the gift wrapped material. To my surprise, the board was stuck at a bout 10 metres saying “Om Shakti”, but what we missed was a board stuck 2 metres below it that said “Murugan Kalyana Manadapam”, to which I simpered like an idiot, though a furnace of anger was spewing within me, for having made a fool of myself in front of the bride.”Om Shakti” was on the first floor and it took us a minute to digest the fact that we had eaten in a marriage, of whom we were not related in any way.

Finally on the first floor,I saw a gleaming “Ramachandran” welcoming me, and enquiring why we were late? I had to name my boss as the villain who called me in for a surprise 8 am meeting (by the way the office starts at 9, which I forgot).When confusion and chaos reigns one realizes, that it takes seconds to start blabbering. He asked me to wait and have lunch , to which I politely refused, but he seemed adamant that he wanted me to see the bride,as he wanted to introduce us. Thankfully we only had our names on the gift wrapper, not the other “bride’s” name. But the bride, was busy dressing up …and we couldn’t eventually meet her. But I was suffering from too much guilt and was being the butt of my 2 other friends chaffs about my “ 30 second dialogue with the other bride”. After a few apologies, about returning to office, I left the building to start my vehicle, and just as I was waiting for my bike to start, I saw the guard in front of the “Murugan Kalyana mandapam”, with a wry look at we three, which seemed to silently mock at our Mandapam Misadventure.