20: Wining and Dining
Chapter 21: Oh, But I Bet You Didn’t Know That
Chapter 23: A Sticky Kind of Glue
Chapter 25: The Rest of the World
Chapter 28: But How Can I Not?
Chapter 29: But Then, How Can I?
Chapter 30: Clutching at Straws
Chapter 32: On the Last Day of Christmas
Chapter 33: Dialling in My Sleep
Chapter 35: Digging Into the Past
Chapter 36: Sometimes It Fails
Chapter 37: Maybe I Don’t Want to Know
Chapter 38: Not the One I Want
Chapter 40: A Million Reasons to Die
Chapter 41: One Reason to Live
In the natural course of things, by the afternoon of her wedding, a bride is thinking ahead to all the things life will have in store for her. Love, joy, romance, silly little spats with her soul-mate that will be sorted out – hopefully in bed, nibbling on toes – and the endless harmony, the never-ending fun and the countless hours she will spend doing nothing much at all in the arms of the love of her life. She imagines that from now on things will be perfect, she will be happy, and gone forever will be anxiety, irritability, chin hair and a generalized tendency towards narkiness. In short, she will become a better, more grown-up version of herself.
She knows that all of this wonderfulness will start with an enormous slice of cake followed by a steamy night in bed, hopefully in a remote tropical island where none of her extended family will be able to call her, text her, tweet her, or otherwise be able to find her. In the normal course of things, on the afternoon of her wedding, a bride is not behind the bars of the local prison waiting for her lawyer to bail her out or for her extended family to tell her all the things that have gone wrong in her life. I’m not saying that this has never happened in the history of weddings. I’m just saying that it is rare.
Before I tell you about my wedding day, I should make a note here – actually it’s more of a disclaimer – about my enormous extended family (mentioned above). Is this story about them, you ask? Well, no. Are they always there, do they have an opinion about everything, and can’t you just ignore them?
Well. Yes, yes, and no.
I have so many cousins, aunties and uncles that live in London that I have to look at every Indian man or woman passing by just to make sure they aren’t one of them. The thing with my relatives is that they tend to feel insulted pretty easily. You should know this before I go on with my story. They keep score of who gives them regular updates about their life and grovels for advice, who invites them to what, and who sends them a box of champagne truffles for Diwali and not just a regular Indian sweet box with plain laddu in it. They also like to write notes.
Dear Rilla,
I hope you enjoy the hundred-and-fifty-piece NutriBullet I sent you. It is a superior brand to the plain three-piece blender sent by Auntie Parul. Thank you for the champagne truffles. I don’t drink (as you know), so I have given them
