The Wedding Diaries - "Kelvan"

3 weeks to go and I got my first ever Kelvan invite! Yippee!!

What's that, you ask? You silly ignorant souls...tsk tsk. Well it's a feast organised by close family friends/relatives for the bride. The traditional Maharashtrian Bridal Shower I suppose. 

The bride (wow, that sounds so strange as I know I'm referring to myself!) is treated like a Queen, with a large delicious spread served to her on silverware and two minions fanning her as she dines. Okay I might've got carried away with the whole fanning bit. But the rest is true, I swear!

I got a formal invite from Ms.Aarti Shete, one of the KG teachers, and I gladly accepted! As a Mumbai mulgi, I knew what a Kelvan was and obviously wanted to savour every bit of it. Who can resist a delectable spread of the best dishes and a lovely afternoon filled with laughter and joy?

So my mother and I made our way into the sunny little home of Aarti miss and what do I see? It is a full fledged party that a lot of planning has gone into! Out popped Monica miss and then Vidya miss and Neeta miss followed by Sangeeta miss & Archana miss. What a beautifully joyous luncheon! 

The menu is presented to me like an award

That's the welcome drink and menu! Told you I was treated like a Queen!

Aww...it's a Bride in a Palanquin! Isn't that tear-inducing?

I was first presented with the charming menu - all hand crafted by Vidya miss. A true artist, I must say! The "Gastronomical Delights" as they called it included one dish by each of the "Sexy Six", as they call themselves, and they were all my favourites. The not-to-be-missed names were "Khadaani Tiranga Biryani" and "Chulbuli ke Chhole". How adorable is that!

I was gushing and gasping at all the preparation when out came the Jaljeera - a soothing palate cleanser to begin the luncheon with. But nothing could prepare me for the table setting! Absolutely breathtaking! I was so touched...

Check the setting! Again, fit for a Queen!

All the home made delicacies...Although, it could all have very well come from the Masterchef Kitchen!

Hehe...a pose before the hair goes up and the head goes into the plate is a must!

Look at the adorable presentation of paan! An  oyster shell presentation! 'Motyanche shimple' 

And presenting the cast of Days of our Lives ;-) 

It finally sunk in that I am indeed The Bride...

Thank you my teachers for such a lovely treat!  

Much Love,

TD for CC

The Wedding Diaries - What the...?

There has to be a day in between all of the festivities and cheer that gives you a reality check and tells you that life is capable of handing you lemons even as you celebrate the sun! What do you do then? Well, you make lemonade! And if possible, sell it and make a few bucks while you're at it!

Today was just such a day...

I get an unpleasant call from my future workplace (a mountain was made out of a molehill if you ask me!) and my mood went plummeting down. The classic knee-jerk reaction demanded that I write them a stinker and end the issue. But that wouldn't have solved anything. It would've given me vengeful pleasure for five minutes and then a feeling of immaturity for having vented on email. Yeah, that's me. So I maintained a dignified silence and let it pass. How much worse could the day get anyway, right?

Issue no.2 presented itself almost immediately. I had made a bad investment choice two years ago. I was young and new to the whole game of money multiplying. So I got started with a pathetic ICICI Prudential savings policy. *ouch* I decided this year that enough was enough and wrote an email requesting a policy surrender after having paid a lakh to them by way of two premiums already. After a lot of ho-humming from them, I received an email saying I couldn't withdraw the policy. I had to pay up or lose the lakh! Come the hell on! Why give me two big matters of grief in one day God? Why!

And God said, "Wait, there's one more :D"

So the hall for the Mehendi function suddenly decided to become unavailable. Yeeeahhh. You heard me. Turns out, we forgot all these weeks to find out what time the hall would be available for use. And yes, the timings don't match. So it's back to the drawing board for us! *sob*

Now I can either sit around and mope or...... I can decide to see the silver lining in all of this...there has to be one, there always is!

Workplace tension - Well, can't be helped!  Comes with the package of working for a big corporate and it doesn't matter if you take a bullet for them. They'll probably turn around and tell you it was your fault for not having carried a shield instead of thanking you! So I decided  to shrug it off and go my way. 

ICICI - Keep the damn money ICICI. Karma will take care of you! *Grins* 

The Hall for Mehendi - Errmm...like someone once said "probably a DIY function at home is best". If nothing works out, it's a home thing for sure!

There! I made my lemonade! 

Much Love,

TD for CC

CCI enfin!

So in between all the wedding chaos, I decided to take a little break and travel across the seven seas to South Mumbai. 

It was to be a charming evening of tea, laughter, girly gossip and of course, a walk through Indian Cricket History! Yes, I was finally going to walk the corridors of CCI - The Cricket Club of India! 

The rendezvous was with Rima Rohan Shah - the personification of South Mumbai sophistication and the owner of the very chic label Raisa. Picture this - a petite young lady with perfect nails and hair that's always in shape walks down CCI Chambers, daintily crosses the street and walks over to the CCI Entry gate. That's Rima for you. She's all sparkle and shimmer and grace and glow. She's also one of my dearest friends...

So this CCI date of ours had been on the cards for about three years - pretty much since her wedding! We finally decided to make it happen and what  an evening it was!

As I walked through the gates, I had this tremendous urge to be that annoying awestruck tourist who took selfies of absolutely every move! I wanted to start with one at the gates just because I was finally in that elusive world!

Rimz (as I fondly know her) took me straight to the "walls of fame", as she called it.And I was astounded! It was a picture gallery of every player who ever captained the Indian side, every team that ever played for India, trophies won and famous on-field shots by our star cricketers! And there they all were... Documented through the years - Maharajah of Porbandar, Lala Amarnath, Mohinder Amarnath, Vijay Merchant, Polly Umrigar, Tiger Pataudi, ...right down to Sunny Gavaskar, Sachin Tendulkar and our very own MSD (Dhoni of course!).

Get this - there's also a Polly Umrigar Sportsman's bar and a Vinoo Mankad suite. 

And is it any surprise that an entire wall is dedicated to the historic 1983 World Cup victory? Photographs of Kapil Dev popping champagne after the victory, a picture of just the cup, another of the entire team celebrating and yet another of the team posing on the CCI grounds!

That's our victorious 1983 team! (And that's also a very bad selfie..I know!)

That's our first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in full Cricket gear

For a cricket non-enthusiast like me to be enchanted like this speaks volumes about the magic of the place. I really wish I had my cricket crazy family with me there. They would have stuck themselves to the walls in the pose of The Vitruvian Man, never to let go. Especially my brother. 

Rimz walked me around the place and showed me the library, the grocery store, the health club, the swimming pool, the Card Room (where the retired amuse themselves with Rummy and the like), the bakery, the Chinese restaurant, The Children's play area etc. It's a  whole world inside. It's so self sufficient, it's almost like entering The Truman Show!

Anyway, after gasping and gushing and taking a dozen selfies (some disastrous), we decided to proceed to the tea-and-snacks part of the evening. Sitting on the  grounds of Brabourne Stadium, we sipped on some lovely tea, reminisced about the days when we lived on a shoestring pocket money budget and laughed about our antics through college. We were later joined by Rima's husband Rohan who laughed harder than us at our stories of NIFT.

Me at Brabourne Stadium

Thank you Rimu and Rohan for a lovely evening! It was an absolute pleasure!

*Kisses*

Much Love,

TD for CC

The Wedding Diaries - A Deck of Cards

Ah the eternal confusion!

What colour? What paper? Maybe not paper...fabric then? Canvas or silk? What about a scroll design? Nice and traditional huh! Errm...too expensive I guess. Handmade paper? Earthy and beautiful! Maybe I could make it look like an ancient manuscript. *rubs hands together in glee* Five minutes later, The Mother rules out the idea. *puts thinking cap back on*. How about a tie-n-dye fabric encased in a handmade paper frame with the invite printed in vegetable dye? *crushes the idea mentally, rolls it into a tight imaginary paper ball and tosses it into the mind's recycle bin*

Ah the eternal confusion of the Perfect Wedding Invite!

How do people do this? How do they manage the right invitation card to suit their aesthetic sense as well as their wallets? I wanted my wedding invite to be different, attractive and at the same time easy on my parents' pockets. It had to be the true reflection of my sensibilities, yet stand out amid the  myriad invitations going out this wedding season! I always knew it had to be affordable because I'd accepted the reality that after my wedding, it was going into the rubbish bins of all my guests *sobs* 

So, what would it be! 

I started thinking about me. If I had to put myself on a mood board, what were the various items I would use to aptly represent me?

Lace, pink, gold, vintage font, the English Rose, Calligraphic lettering, Floral prints, Vine and trellis patterns, pearls, pale hues of pop colours, monochromatic graphics, layers of feathery textures, Madhubani prints in ashy English colours, Origami folds...

*Phew* What extensive creative explorations! Anyway, having successfully completed the exploratory stage, I started collecting pictures that would fit into this design framework and came up with a host of ideas!

                        

What a process! But it looked like my ideas were finally taking shape. They were starting to fill out and we were all quite happy with the designs.

My parents and I sat down and chalked out the script for the card, put some rough sketches together, had endless meetings with the graphic designer and the screen printer, chose the  kind of paper we wanted, sat through hours of pigment mixing at the dingy screen printer's workshop and voila! The Perfect Wedding Invitation Card was  finally in place. (Watch out for pictures of the finished product coming up very soon!)

My parents and I patted ourselves on our backs and gave each other smug smiles of satisfaction.

Ah the incomparable bliss of creative satisfaction!

***A special note about the Postal Department. I posted some cards at the GPO in Mumbai on Saturday the 17th and I got confirmation receipts and "congratulations, what a pretty card!" calls from Chennai on Monday the 19th! I realise we all underestimate good ol' India Post when actually, their efficiency is unmatched! Kudos to our postal department! *slow clap*

Much Love,

TD for CC

The Wedding Diaries - The saga of the parent meet!

You've seen it in the movies and think you're prepared for it. You've heard your friends' stories and think you're prepared for it. You've read numerous blogs and books on real life experiences and think you're prepared for it. Are you really? 

Not. Even. Close.

You don't know if your parents are going to embarrass you or make you proud. (Either way it's fun, trust me  on this.) 

You don't know if his parents are going to be nice to yours. You don't know if you should act coy or display your super confident side. Should you offer tea or leave these formalities to your mother? Should you touch their feet (doesn't come naturally to me at all!) or offer a handshake? Should you keep it simple with the classic 'Namaste' or go with a more formal 'Pranaam'? How should you dress? Can you stick to English or go with the more traditional Hindi? Oh God! The endless questions!

You can't turn to your mom because she's as clueless! You can't turn to the man you want to marry because he's going to give you a blank shrug of the shoulders as if to say "I got nothing!". Dad is emotional enough about the whole thing so forget about worrying him. The American resident brother is more unfamiliar with and a tad detached from this very traditional affair to offer any answers...

Great! Now what!

So we all decided to stick to what we knew best - the Mumbaiyya style! My mom chose comfort over dressy and went with a dreamy white Salwar Kameez. My choice of a simple chudidhar came from a place of slight rebellion (I refuse to succumb to the Saree+shy bride custom) as well as the practical elegant beauty of the outfit. My dad, well, tough choice between black trousers and blue. He picked gray in the end I think. Howewer, I will tell you this - there definitely was the infamous cliche of 'our daughter made this painting'! *cringe*

October 4th 2014 will go down in history as the most successful parent meet ever! There was laughter, healthy camaraderie, selfie war, endless photographs, gifts and bonhomie.

The date was picked and details discussed to boot! What a day!

Glad it's over...

Watch out for more from me!

Much love,

TD for CC

The Firefly

My mother and I stood in the balcony of our third floor apartment and I watched as this bright eyed girl with sunlight bouncing off her hair hopped across the quadrangle between our buildings. She looked up and beamed as my mother waved out to her. The eight year old me clearly remembers thinking, "that's one of the sunniest smiles I've ever seen!". "She's my student and the star of my latest play," said my mom smiling down at her. Called 'The Firefly', the title of the play and the role fit her personality like a glove! This tiny little ball of sunshine with bouncy hair and the brightest smile was my Kitikat...(some people knew her as Isha Mantry)

She personified positivity and always knew what she wanted. How such a tiny person could pack in so much punch always baffled me. She fought her way through school with a flick of her hair, defied the bullies and made her way into NIFT. "Do you want to be a tailor?" asked the poor ignorant souls but she just smiled at them. She stood out amid the pack of conformists with her bold use of colour and walked away with an award at the end of the grueling four years in college. Through it all, she remained the chirpy, optimistic and sunny little firefly she was! 

The film industry wasn't any easier on her. They thought she was a gullible little thing, but she laughed as her work left them astounded. She achieved so much on her own terms that I often felt like a proud parent. 

It's been 21 years since I saw you hopping across the courtyard and you have been such a big part of my life Kittu...

I'm so sorry for all the cancelled plans, the regrets, the hurt, the accusations, the  fights and all the times I should've been there for you and wasn't...

If only...

If only I'd called you every time I thought of you. If only I'd been a part of all your achievements and your successes; your moments of joy & triumph and the occasional times of sorrow and struggle. If only...

You shouldn't have gone so early. You're my sunshine. I learnt from you that waking up every day with a smile is so important! I can't watch House without thinking of how hard we laughed into the night at Hugh Laurie's speeches. I can't look at Meredith Grey without thinking of how much your smile is needed in this world full of grim faces. I can't think of my childhood without wanting to pull your cheeks...

Sleep peacefully you tiny little ball of sunshine with bouncy hair and the brightest smile. 

Sleep peacefully you little firefly...

Lots of love,
TD

The boy who made us smile...

"My name is Chinmay Aniruddha Barve," said an enthusiastic young voice in a pure Maharashtrian  accent. 

The place: London

The year: 2010

His eyes twinkled with mischief as he displayed a set of perfect white teeth with that winning smile of his! These are my first and everlasting memories of the boy who had a voracious appetite for life. The boy who truly wanted to experience every waking moment...

He wanted to sample every dish of every cuisine in the world and invent a few along the way! He loved the chemistry of alcohol and could be found mixing magic potions trying to come up with his own brand of booze! He wanted to be the most famous name in the wine industry and worked tirelessly to educate himself on the intricacies of wine making. 

Always ready for an adventure, he was our go-to guy for spontaneous trips to Bournemouth and midnight escapades on the streets of London! Our little Chinu, the boy who never let us touch our wallets because, well, that's just how largehearted he was! He worked at one of the finest restaurants on Baker Street and taught himself the etiquette of running a premium eatery. After hours, he would be as much at ease in the local rundown pub trying to convince the DJ to play Armin Van Buuren. He made us listen to Paul Van Dyk and insisted we love him as much as he did! 

He could wolf down a whole pizza and then get right down to marinating chicken to be eaten a couple of hours later. 

Chinu, you taught me that life was about laughter, it was about being proud of who you were and powering through the biggest obstacles. Your smile, your generosity, your values on friendship and relationships and your optimism are what I'll always remember you by.

CC & Chinya ...unforgettable times...

I guess I know why God made you such an  unforgettable human being. It's because he knew your purpose in your unfairly short life was to spread joy! I hope He up there realises He's in for unbelievable adventures with you around...

I'll always have fond memories of you, my fellow Taurean...You, with the voracious appetite for life. The boy who truly wanted to experience every waking moment...

I salute you Mr.Chief Sommelier! You will forever be thought of with a smile, I promise you that. Rest In Peace, Chinu.

Much Love and Respect,

TD for CC...