The New Bride

Tuesday, February 23, 2010




I had a feeling that my blog for today would find its source in the ‘Get-Together’ that I was going to attend in the evening at a friend’s house. The ‘Get-Together’ was organized by her to enable her friends to meet the new bride in her family, who had come to Pune from Allahabad for a few days to collect her office papers. I had heard about the new bride from my husband yesterday as he had picked her up from her office in his car. I, however, had no intention to write about the obvious i.e. ‘The New Bride’ till, of course, I met her myself.


On being introduced to me, she, draped impeccably in a pretty sari, and with her shoulder-length silky straight hair framing a lightly made-up smiling face, moved gracefully towards me and started to bend towards my feet. I quickly moved to hold her gently by shoulders and gave her a light hug instead. She touched the feet of other elders with reverence thus performing to perfection the duty of a newly-wed bride towards offering her obeisance to the elders related to the family of her sister-in-law.


While she joined her sister-in-law in the kitchen, I took my daughter to the kids’ room. There I set her up with some crayons and a coloring-book, and asked her if I could go back to the living room. She didn’t let me as she didn’t have her brother for company, for I had dropped him to his music class before coming there, and usually takes some time to mingle with the other kids. I made myself comfortable on the kids’ bed, and started talking with children. A class II student among them excitedly told me that he was going to appear in the role of a Rat dancing to the tunes of ‘Pied Piper of Hamelin’ going to be performed in his school the next day. I asked him to show some of the moves, and he instantly broke into the jump and dance action. The younger son of my friend, a class I student, quickly grabbed my attention by showing off his cool collection of ‘hi-fi writing instruments’. I expressed my awe and envy at his collection, and was immediately told by one older boy of class V to hold my sense of wonder till I saw the great stuff that he had amassed at his house. My attention was then summoned by the elder son of my friend, a student of class VI. He gushed that he had become a millionaire in a certain computer game. I wondered if he could exchange his game booty for some real-life money, and he said that had his game been a more popular one, he could have sold off his virtual money for the real one. My friend came in to call me for the yummy snacks that sat on the dining table waiting for the guests’ attention. She asked her elder son to go fetch my son from his music class, and then got busy with serving piping hot pakoris to her guests.


I came back to the world of the grown-ups, and found them engrossed in chatting away happily about grown-up stuff broadly falling in the categories of Food, Clothing, Shelter, and Socializing. I found that I was forcing myself to look interested, laugh aloud, and listen attentively to whatever went on among the older humans. Suddenly, the doorbell rang, and my son came in with his surprise escorts for that day. He looked thrilled at having been picked up by his friends, and ran with them to the kids’ room. After a while, a soft voice addressed me asking me if my son wouldn’t have any other snacks besides Pasta. It was the new bride of course! I hadn’t realized that she was quietly taking care of the needs of all her guests, and had gone after my son to offer him the snacks. I once again found the lost thread of interest as the new bride played a perfect hostess bridging the world of grown-ups with that of the young children.