Why I want to get married again?

Well I know this is a long one but in all fairness it has been almost 4 years in the making....

Now hang on, before you guys go ahead and judge me and start calling me names, the title really should read: " Why I want to get married to Saba again?" better? :-)

I've been meaning to document the circumstances surrounding our wedding day which are well known to everyone for it was a day after mohtarma Benazir Bhutto decided to get shot and the city was burning, and I took the bold, some say stupid decision to not call off the wedding and still go to Saba's place to bring her back. We ended up back at my place eating khichdi on the same night at 7pm, which has to be one of the earliest wedding ceremonies in Karachi ever!

Thinking about it again, I should've seen it coming, I mean I had all the signs. In Oct 07, I went to Khi for some so called shopping, and Bibi decided to end her self imposed exile and come back to Karachi, we all know what happend there. The whole city shutdown after that and since it was eid as well, I got a grand total of 1 day to do some shopping. The second sign was when I went to give the order for my sherwani, I think sometime before the Oct trip. We went into a shop on Tariq Road and went downstairs, They guy was taking my measurements when all of a sudden all of the shop keepers started to act funny, when I enquired he put a finger to his lip and somehow told me that the shop was being robbed above. Thankfully the robbers decided not to come downstairs but when we eventually made it back upstairs, one of the clients had lost all their money as they had come to make a final payment for one of the suits they had ordered. A sign? not really right?

That December back in '07 was going to be special. I had spent a year saving up for my wedding managing 3 committees simultaneously in order to have enough to pull off a decent wedding ceremony. This does not include the careful accummulation of funds, my mom was pulling off at her end to do her best for her soon to be bahu. In her mind this was going to be the best ever wedding for her one and only son with suhag puras and all, I don't even know what that is.....anyways, there were going to be all of 7 weddings in my family that December, not to mention 2 of my close friends also deciding to tie the knot right after me. Imagine what a feat it was within the family to come up with unique dates for all the myriad of events that go towards making a "perfect wedding". 

 

Technically, Saba and I had been married on Dec 28th 2006 when we signed our papers but the rukhsati had been set for the same date next year, so Dec 28th, 2007 was the designated day. In that sense, we had set our date first and therefore avoided the ensuing arguments that were to take place between so many of my relatives to get the dates that suited them best. Not to say that attempts weren't made to move us from our chosen one as well, with accusations of "nazar lagana" starting to fly left right and center, it was all quite amusing up till then. Saba and I got married in stages, my friends used to say, I did it on purpose in order to prolong the experience, but sadly the climax turned out to be a party pooper leaving a very bad taste in the mouth.

The first step was the baat pakki back in March 2004, small affair with my parents and myself going over to her place and officially asking for her hand, the second step was a "small" engagement ceremony in December of that same year. This was the closest to the most 'complete' event of our entire extended wedding as it was attended by almost all my friends and family at PIA garden in Karachi, though Saba would have a different take on that as well :). The next step was the nikah in Dec 2006 at her place again and the final steps were supposed to be the wedding and the valima in Dec 2007.

 

As it turned out I was at a friend's place practing dance steps on "beedi jalayi le" for his mehndi when I heard that bibi had been shot. It didn't sink in at first, I just said screw it and lets keep practising. Slowly but surely the realization that the scene outside was getting bad started to creep in and then we started making some phone calls. Saba used to live really closeby and she told me that she had been on Tariq road when the news hit and how everyone had a made a mad dash for safety, the scenes were quite dramatic and she told me she didn't think anything nice was going to come out of it. She was scared and I could feel it but for some reason I was steadfast and became more and more adamant that the rukhsati was going to take place the next day no matter what. I waited it out at my frined's place for a while longer and then made my way to saba's place, where the decorations from her mayun were still up and she was sitting on her sofa in her yellow dress, head draped with her orange dupatta, melancholic, reflecting on what was to be. My saas was also putting up a brave front but I could sense her disappointment as well.

The family had pulled off 5 weddings prior to ours and the general sentiment was "why now?", "why us?" I tried to console, I tried to give everyone a sense of purpose and kept on repeating that we'll see how thing sto develop and will take a call in the morning. I somehow made it back to my place that night, which in retrospect was probably not the wisest or safest of moves but I had to get back if I was to come to pick her up the next day.

The morning brought with it fresh perspective and with very little speculation, I just started like a parrot. The wedding was going to be today come what may and I started getting everyone ready. I made a few calls to my friends to tell them to stay away, and it was going to be my trusted Cuore that would double up as my friend's accord and act as the rukhsati car. A very dear cousin of mine joined me in this foray into the burning tyre jungle and we set off as best we could as a baraat. During the whole time, I did feel as if my determination was what was holding this whole thing together, and some part inside me was wondering, should I have pushed for it or held back? maybe we should have postponed? but I couldn't let the negative thoughts enter my mind I had to stay positive.

We reached Saba's place and inside the house everything felt normal, whoever could make it from nearby did and it helped that Saba's family lived in the same building. So I had my sherwani dressing scene and wore my turban. Saba was dolled up by my little sis who did a great job, and she took her place beside me. We had our amateur photo sessions and had homemade food before the elders decided that we should leave before darkness falls, so we left just around maghrib in a cuore and a baleno with me driving the cuore and tailing the baleno ahead at breakneck speed to avoid any mobs and get back home safely.

Back home at 7pm after the Rukhsati!

  

The event itslef would have been more memorable for the right reasons had some relatives not decided to indulge in a traditional spat, but these things are unavoidable, however, because of it my only enduring memory from the rukhsati is the sight of my mother crying and all the other upset faces around. That was probably the first moment where I felt that I had done the wrong thing, I had made the wrong decision. In my haste, and selfishness, and naievety, I thought I was doing the right thing, and instead of postponing the whole thing, I went for a patched up event which left me with nothing but regrets.

Everyone had been looking forward to this day, Saba, her mother, her sister, my mother, my sisters, not to mention myself. Saba wanted to look her best, get her hair and makeup done well from a pro, my saali wanted to dress up in the suit she got made specially for the day, my mother wanted her bride to look the best amongst the others in the family and the list goes on. What did I want, I just wanted for the guy who attended every Tom, Dick and Harry's wedding over the past 7 years and brought it to life, to have his own wedding attended by all his dear friends, of which he had many (wry smile). 

Again, it would've been still chalked up to "one of those days" in the grand scheme of things, if it ended there, but it didn't. Now there was still the small case of my valima to be done, and now with the tensions in the city easing up a bit, the other 2 friends of mine still had their functions on time leaving me with absolutely no dates in between, not to mention that no wedding gardens were taking any new bookings as they were trying to sort out their messes with the back logs. We decided to put up a tent near my place on a vacant ground, so we found a wedding guy who does the decorations and the food and everything and gave him the contract. I pissed off one of my friends as my valima clashed with his wedding and so once again the full complement of my friends didn't make it to my valima as they got split between attending his or mine, and since mine was all the way in Gulshan, safety issues came in to play, but never mind, the ones who mattered showed up. But it wasn't going to be easy. On the morning of January 4th, the night of my valima, I went to the ground around 11 am to see if the work had started, it hadn't. By noon we had a couple of trucks show up with some chairs and bamboo sticks. My heart started beating again as atleast there was some action, however, it still felt a bit slow for my liking. So I called up the guy who was supposed to be in charge. No answer. After trying incessantly for a while, I went to his office at around 1:30 where I promptly got to know from one of his coworkers that they guy's father had passed away in the wee hours of that morning. I knew how Aladdin feels on his flying carpet at that time becasue it was getting a bit woozy......From that moment onwards, started the mad dash to get everything coordinated by myself. I tried to get as many contacts out of his coworkers as possible and started to call them one by one, the flowers, guy, the sofa guy, the lights man, the generator team, the waiters and so on. By 9pm (the official time for the guests to arrive) the tent had just gone up and the waiters were putting the final touches to the tables, there was still no light coz the generator team had lost their way and the electricity in my mohalla went off. I parked my Cuore up at the entrance and cranked up the headlights to full beam which made a tiny difference and worked as fast with the workers as possible.

In the end it looked as magical as it could, what with no light tower for good photographs, Saba not entirley satisfied with her hair, the sofas having exposed borders and a wobbly stage. We got through it but is that how it was supposed to be?

4 amazing years on and thats the only regret I have, for not holding out, for not having chosen to wait. Maybe I still have time to make amends, to give Saba that great event, one day IA.