Can Signatures Unite Two People?!

I was recently asked by a family friend if I'd want to have a court marriage instead of a proper ceremony. To that I, very honestly, told him that I would prefer a proper wedding inclusive of all the ceremonies. The judgemental look I got for this reply was enough for me to realize that he didn't approve of it. But giving that awful look wasn't enough for him I suppose, it was accompanied by a slight "why do you want to spend your money hosting random relatives and create an event out of your marriage?!"

Why does one think that the sole reason for having a proper wedding is that one wants to make an event out of it? What about the emotional value and the cultural importance affiliated to these ceremonies? Being a hindu, a hindu marriage has three important aspects- kanyadaan, panigrahana, and saptapadi. In the most lay man language, when one goes to explain these three aspects, one can say-

• kanyadaan is the giving away of the daughter by her father
• panigrahana is the voluntary holding of hands by the groom of the bride near the fire which signifies the union of the bride and the groom
• saptapadi is the taking seven steps around the holy fire wherein each step is a form of a promise.

The basis of these vows- of being together in happiness and otherwise, being supportive of each other, of taking care of each other, respecting one another, and so on- is almost the same in case of different religions, castes and sub-castes.

My point is why do we take away the importance of such a holy union and reduce it to a mere marriage certificate? What is it that is making us erode the edges and reduce things to make them seem irrelevant? Have these practices got no place in our modern lives now?

Criticizing one's choices is hardly my intention, I'm hardly in a place to do that. This write up is barely about sparking a debate between court marriages and traditional ceremonies. My sole goal, however, is trying to invoke some realization, raise my doubts, jog your treadmill of thoughts, for,

Culture does not make people, People make culture.

5 Alternatives To A Bachelorette Party

Not a fan of the clichéd, wild bachelorette parties? You could a plan something different with the help of these 5 ideas jotted down for you.

Spa-cation

Plan a bachelorette with the sole intention of pampering the groom or the bride before their big day. The best part about this- you needn't plan anything apart from deciding the place of the said spa-cation, everything else will be definitely taken care by the resort.

Health And Wellness Retreat

Give the groom or the bride a respite from the constant wedding pressure. Plan a bachelorette in a health and wellness centre to give them some peace of mind. Connect with your (soon to-be-taken) friend without the hindrance of technology.

Go Vagabonding

Every bachelorette party list must include this. Take your soon to-be-hitched friend on a road trip with a few close knit friends and make some memories 'Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara' style or 'The hangover' way, whichever suits you.

A Day At...

Haven't got the leverage of planning an entire trip? Plan a day to be spent in a vineyard or take them for some beer tasting or whiskey tasting. This is one of the easiest alternative to the mainstream bachelorette parties.

For The Adventure-holic

Make sure you plan such a bachelorette only and only if the groom or the bride are adventure-holics. There is an array of options available. It could be anything simple like camping or something super complex like sky diving. All you have to keep in mind is the fact that they haven't done that particualr activity before.

5 Things To Do When PMSing

PMSing much?
This might help you. May be, probably, just try it.

• Sugar, Sugar, Get The Sugar Rush

 I know it's not just sugar. You'd want it all, all the crisps, all the cake, all the fries, all the junk. And if you ask me, I'd say, have it all, you deserve it. It sounds cliched, but this is the truth. PMS=FOOD CRAVINGS, hence, don't stop yourself from the junk trap (unless absolutely necessary.)

• Pamper Yourself

Go an a salon date with yourself (just make sure not to set-up a waxing appointment) or buy yourslef something you have wanted for a while now or go on a shopping spree. Treat yourself and make yourself feel special.

• Skip the romcom, opt for a sitcom instead

Let's face it, romcom is only going to make things worst. Why not add a little cheer to that blue mood by going for a sitcom or a comedy flick?!

• Detoxify! Deyoxify! Detoxify!

You know what does green tea do other than help you lose weight? It detoxifies your body and instantly helps you uplift your mood. This is definitely going to help you with your PMS. There is a variety of green tea available but the lavender infused tea, especially, shall help you with the pain and your mood.

• Ride In That Emotional Rollercoaster

Yep! Ride in it! Let is all out! From one fellow PMS victim to the other, I know, we need that emotional release and I doubt there is anything wrong with the entire release process.

Losing Weight The Lazy Ways

For all those (JUST LIKE ME) who have never been able to commit the 2 (much-needed) hours to the gym and are always looking out for easier ways to shed some extra pounds, here are a few undemanding ways to achieve your goal.

Sip On This Special Water All Day Long

There are many easy concoctions apart from the well known 'lemon and honey in warm water' that not only detoxify, but also helps to lose weight. Let me give you a few easy examples you could use-

• Add sliced cucumber to pitcher full of water. You can consume this immediately.

• Add cucumber, grapefruit, lemon to a pitcher of water, let it sit for at least 15 minutes before consuming.

• Add mint leaves, strawberries, sliced lemon to a pitcher a water. This too can be consumed immediately.

• Add sliced cucumber, lemon, grated ginger, and mint leaves to a pitcher of water.

EAT at regular intervals

Have you noticed you tend to binge eat on chips and all the possible junk only when you've been hungry for long?! Hence, eat at regular intervals. I'm  not saying eat a whole packet of chips every hour or so. What I mean is, eat some salad, or a fruit, or a few (not more than 10) chips every two hours or so, as and when the hunger strikes. Try to stick to healthy and light food as much as possible.

Snacks you could swap your regular chips with:

• Unsalted peanuts, pistachios.

• Yogurt

• Sweet potato fries/ chips

• Roasted chickpeas

• Hard boiled egg

• Air popped pop corn

Shorten your shopping trips

Do not be lured into to the magical alley of junk and ready to eat and ready to cook foodstuffs. Steer clear of it or at least try to. Make a list of what you need and try incessantly to stick to your list only.

Swap dinners with soup

No, I'm not asking you to starve yourself or sleep on an empty stomach. Soup dinners are a good alternative to rotis and rice. This way you won't trick your mind into thinking 'just one spoonful of rice' which is, let's face it, a blatant lie.

There are so many alternatives of soups available that you could be having a different soup each night one whole month (to say the least.)

To give you a few examples:

• Different lentil soups

• Various noodle soups

• Clear soups

In the case of noodle and pasta soups you have to make sure that the noodles and pastas are not made of maida and restrict the quantity of the same in your soup. Do not opt for creamy soups and ready to eat soups.

Workout for 10 minutes

 

Working out is such a pain. But there seems to be no alternative to this painful experience. No amount of green tea and detoxifying water shall help you unless you invest at least 10 minutes of your time in workout. My favourite quick workout is skipping. You could try a collection of workouts like squats, jumping jacks, push-ups, crunches, lunges, donkey-kicks, etc. I'm no expert by any means but 2 sets of some of these exercises along with restricted intake of food will definitely help you to lose weight.

7 IDEAS TO JAZZ UP YOUR WEDDING CAKE

You no longer have to settle for the simple, default wedding cake designs. You can now customize and personalize your wedding cakes by giving it a cultural touch.

Henna Design Cake

What better way to indianize a wedding cake than decorating it with henna inspired designs. It looks simple and classy. You can play with different colour combinations and customize it as per your taste.

Drape It

Give the generic wedding cake a twist by draping the cake with an edible saree. You can match the edible draped saree with that of the bride's outfit and surprise her with a matching cake.

Play With The Flavour

Get over the chocolate and vanilla flabours. Ask the baker to whip a completely unique cake for your wedding reflecting your favourite dessert through its flavour. My personal favourite is the gulab jamun cake (coz duh! it's gulab jamun.) Besides gulab jamun, there's rass malai cakes, mango rassmalai cake, rossgulla cake, etc. 

Dholak Cake

This dholak cake looks unreal. I was amazed just like you ae when i set my eyes upon it. You can surprise the bride with a dholak or a shehnai cake on her mehendi day and make it extra special.

Saree Cake

I want this cake to be included in my wedding festivities. I shall pester anybody and everybody about this. Just look at it. It doesn't even look like a cake. It's so perfect symbolizing some important aspects for a bride in her wedding.

Doll Cake With A Twist

Doll cake was such a rage when i was a kid (10 years back or so) Everybody wanted one for their birthdays. Well, you can still have one bridal doll cake. You can also get a groom doll cake and arrange for a cute couple cake.

Customized Cake Topper

The above wedding cakes not your style? Trying to stick to simple designs? You can add your own touch to it by getting a customized cake topper. 

A WALK THROUGH YOUR SOUVENIRS

 It was never the clutter of objects,

That we were meant to treasure.

I'm walking down a mushy path towards a building. Everything looks grey and cloudy. It seems like it has been raining for days and the rain has just taken a respite. Entering the building, i realize it is not a building at all but more like a house. I start walking up the stairs. Everything feels oddly familiar, but not quite. There are pictures on the walls. Pictures of young people, dogs, pictures of an old couple, pictures of me. I want to know more about the person who looks like me but doesn't feel like me.

I enter the musty room right in front of me. Everything looks moss bitten, like the people living here are not able to maintain it somehow. Or should i say were? Instinctively I open the sole wooden wadrobe to the right of the square window and reach for a fat leather bound book kept at the bottom. I purposefully take it downstairs and settle into this pink plush chair beside the window. The chair seems like a new addition to the old decor.

Opening the book, I see unfamiliar faces with my own and I wonder are they really familiar or is this some sort of deja vu or more like deja savoir. I see that the the same house seems new in the pictures. There's a well maintained garden. There are pictures of me gardening, there are dogs in the background, pictures of me baking, pictures of parties. I look content, so happy. 

There's a picture of an mid-aged couple, the woman looks like me, it must be me, with another man. He looks famliar and then just a few secondsin, the moment is gone and the unfamiliarity sets in. He is in many pictures but I don't know who is he. 

I shut the book and get out of the chair. There is a mirror on he wall and I get a glimpse of a reflection, an old, frail reflection. I was looking at myself and before that could sink in, I woke up. No, not with a thud, just woke up like that is all I was meant to see.

Yes, that was a dream. My day started with such occult feel to it (if that is even possible.) I started by reflecting upon the obvious questions, what was the point of the dream, why did I get such a dream, so on and so forth. But my mind later travelled to something more relevant- the scrap book of memories. I saw all the things that i would like to see in my future. There were pets, there was nature, the much needed isolation, there were friends, there was everything that I would ever want from life. But I wonder where did the city girl go? Or was that more of an old age abode? 

Don't get me wrong, I do not consider my dream to be a message from the universe, or to be more than a mere dream. I'm just giving in to whirlwind of thoughts it raised in my feeble mind. I loved what I saw in those few seconds. I hope my memory book looks closer to the one I saw in the dream (however hazy it might seem.) It seemed like a pictorial documentation of my entire life with my favorite moments highlighted in my own way. 

Would you invest your time and efforts in making a memory book? Would you like to step into the world of reminiscence by merely turning a page of a book? Do you ever wonder what would be the contents of it? 
Or, 
Would it all be a mere shout in the void?

DON'T MOCK ME for you don't understand me...

“You know I was thinking of getting a tattoo.”
“Yeah? Get what though?”
“Ummm…it’s related to the Harry Potter series.”
“Harry Potter. Hmmm. But why? Don’t you think you should get something that means something to you? Something significant."

I was strangely taken aback. But what could I say? I couldn’t help but look like a recoiled hurt snake. Could I explain to him what hurt me? Could I explain to myself what hurt me? Was I merely hurt or were there strata to how I felt?

Could I explain to him that harry potter was an escape for me or is that the most generic answer people hear. Just the other day someone asked me why do you like fiction, and I told him how it was an escape for me. And all he did was smirk at me and say, “Please give me genuine answer which is yours and not just something you read somewhere and say that just because it sounds better than the real answers.”

How do these people judge you like that? And why do they even do that? Some say because they like to term themselves as the realists. Some say because they like to feel superior to you by hurling such questions at you and enjoy seeing you get bewildered. I think I disagree with these opinions. I don’t think it’s in their nature. I don’t think they have an ulterior motive behind saying this or doing this to you. I think they merely lack imagination.

People say there are so many stories already in this world. Why would you then need fiction? Well, fictional stories are only partly fictional. They reflect the authors’ plights, longings, affections, hopes, and so much more. It’s not about what they say but what they mean to say. You think harry potter was merely a series about an orphan with abilities to save the world? No. Hell no. It was so much more than what meets your eye. It’s about love which comes in so many forms, shapes and sizes, it’s about friendship, it’s about what you believe in can be realized.

To me, it was all the above and much more. It taught me how being alone was different from being lonely, how loneliness was just a state of mind, it taught me how I could find friends in the most unlike places, it gave me my first true love- books. How was I to explain to my friend that it might merely be a children’s novel for you, but, it completed me in the most unlikely ways that he could imagine.

What was the tattoo you ask?

LUMOS- for I am my own light.