** I wrote the first three parts of this three years ago, in
the two months following the actual events, the events of my cousin Vinitha’s
wedding. I never wrote the last part, the part about her actual wedding. I
tried it, but never found an interesting angle. I’m retrying it again.
Hopefully it will come out better than those failed attempts. It’s crazy to
think this December will be their 4th Wedding Anniversary. I would
easily go back to that day today, but I can’t. What I have is memories. Great memories
that I will hopefully will never forget. This was written completely in March,
2014. It does bring up things that I’ve done or learned over the past four
years. If anything, it’s a 40 month retrospective.**
A Wedding in India
Family, Fun and a City That Does Sleep
(Part 4 of 4)
(Part 4 of 4)
It was probably around 11:30 PM, when I found myself pissing
into a bush of flowers with my cousin’s fiancée Ryan, when I had a weird
flashback. I suddenly remembered a time 14 years earlier, at that same palace,
at a similar wedding, when it was my eldest cousin and some other people (his
friends?) pissing out a fire near that same bush. After I got past the fact
that my eldest cousin at least had the wherewithal to piss out a fire and not
piss into a random bush, I finally realized what 14 years meant. 14 years meant
that this was no longer some distant memory. I was that person. I was now just
4 years younger than Avinash was then. 14 years isn’t that long. But in this
sense it is forever. One of the only things I remember from my Uncle’s wedding
in December, 1996 (nearly 14 years ago to the day) was scouring tables for
extra ice cream. 14 years later, I’m pissing in a bush with a person I didn’t
even know 24 months earlier. That’s progress, isn’t it?
Vinitha’s wedding was at the same location that my Uncle’s
was 14 years earlier, at the Palace Grounds in the outskirts of Bangalore. With
exactly none of my help, her people had decorated it beautifully (Four Years
Later, I still remember) The colors were chartruse and gold (or maybe green and
chartruse – I’m sorry Vin, I guess I don’t remember it). I have no idea what
chartruse was, but it was a damn good color. What Vinitha really got that was
damn good (apart from her husband), was weather. The climate in Bangalore in
December is generally good, but this December night was perfect. It had a light
wind, to make it livable, but that wind created a perfect balance between hot
and cold. It was a magical atmosphere, the wind blowing through at a perfect
amount. For one night, there was no more perfect place to be than the Palace
Grounds in Bangalore.
The day started in earnest many hours earlier at St. Patrick’s
Church in the heart of Bangalore. It was the same church I had been to many
times previously for Sunday Mass, and once previously for a wedding, that of my
Uncle and Aunt, 14 years earlier. That time, I was part of the wedding, their
paige boy, bringing up the rings. All I remember about that experience is my insistence
that my turbin did not fit (despite it fitting on my Aunt), mainly because I
didn’t want to wear it.
This time I was a spectator, one of many. In my theoretical
place was my youngest cousin, Nihal. He was only 3 years old, looking as cute
as ever bringing up the rings. It was the circle of life. It was his own father’s
wedding where I was the paige boy. At the time, our oldest cousing was 23. Now,
not counting the cousins who were spawned from the man who’s wedding we were
attending that day, the youngest cousin 19. The Circle Of Life.
Unlike my sister, I had no part in this wedding other than
being an important, and active guest. My sister was a bridesmaid, which, when
considering the dress selection, was a process that started about two years
earlier, during a strange trip my cousin made to the US to shop for wedding
stuff despite her now husband not having yet proposed. She was involved in the
wedding. She had responsibilities. I had none. I was jealous at first, but when
I realized that this allowed me to sit back, talk the shit with my cousins when
the main festivities were going on, and enjoy life just
the same, I was fine.
The wedding itself was perfect. I’ve already mentioned how
incredible the setting was. To connect it to sports for a minute, one of the
most exceptional sporting events I’ve watched was the 2007 NFC Championship Game
between the Giants and Packers, mainly because of the conditions and setting.
It was in Lambeau Field, in small Green Bay, at -3 degrees, with a wind-chill
of -27 ( to put this in perspective with my Celsius abiding family that will be
reading this – that is really effing cold). On that day, no place on earth was
more important than Green Bay, Wisconsin. On December 27th, 2010, no
place was more important, more special, more amazing, than the palace grounds.
The DJ was good, the alcohol was flowing, the family was
present, Vinitha’s awesome collection of friends were present. Everyone was
present. It was a special time to be alive. It was a place I had to be, and was
lucky to be at. I hadn’t really met a lot of these people for five years or
more. Back then I was just a kid, too naïve to know how cool my cousins were,
and too young to know any better. This wasn’t then. I was no longer 15 (Quick
note: I’m writing this two weeks before I turn 23, so I know how weird this
sounds). I was old enough to do whatever I wanted (within reason). I was old
enough to have something to talk about with most of the adults, and in this
setting ‘adults’ encompassed pretty much everyone I knew. I was old enough to
experience everything this wedding should be.
A couple highlights of the wedding, outside of the symbolic
moment of realizing I was pissing where others did piss 14 years earlier, were
these following moments. First was the dance floor, headed by a strong DJ who
played all the right music, but also there was, I believe, something like a fog
machine. that, whisked through the wind that pulled through the Palace Grounds,
created an idyllic atmosphere that will rarely be matched (especially rarely in
Bangalore – I hope to match it with my own wedding J ). Second was my Uncle (I’m intentionally
leaving out the name, but given he’s the only living “Uncle” I have on that
side of my family, and that most of the people who will be reading this are
related to me, they’ll know who this is), first complimenting me on my
tolerance. This was the first time I had really drank in front of him (I was a
young 15, nowhere near ready to accept a drink, the last time I visited India –
I’m pretty sure given our interactions since he would no longer be nearly as
surprised). I felt proud that he said I had a high tolerance. Being still in
college, I probably didn’t realize that this isn’t the greatest compliment one
can receive, and also I’ve done reasonable work to undo that compliment over
the past four years. Of course, my Uncle was not exhibiting his own tolerance
when making that compliment, as he also challenged me to a drink-off with his
wife, who he kept claiming could ‘drink me under the table’. I haven’t taken
him up on that offer, partly because I’m not sure she would like to take him up
either, but also partly because I like him having his delusions.
A wedding is a special time, not only because you get the celebrate the love between two people, but also because you get to get together with family and celebrate that together. This was the closest to a family reunion I’ve ever been a part of on my Mom’s side (slightly more of the living crowd was here today than was there at my Uncle’s wedding in December, 1996). I’ll probably never have this experience again. My cousin Marie’s wedding was in 10 months, but we had slightly fewer people in the immediate extended (no oxymoron intended) family attend, and also slightly fewer days together (though it was awesome still the same). My Mom told me at the time to treasure these days. They will never come again, not at this perfect confluence of ages among all of us. Discouting my Uncle’s three kids who were between 3-9 at the time, we were at the perfect age mix. As weddings come and go in our family, more will get more mature, more married, and more parent-ly. It will never be the same.
That’s not a bad thing, at least for me since I can remember it all.
I hadn’t heard the song Stereo Love before. At least I hadn’t
heard it for enough time to know what I was hearing. I heard it the first time
in India at my cousin’s roce on the 25th of December. It was one of
a number of songs that would repeat themselves throughout the week together,
but no song, at least to me, was as important or as lasting as Stereo Love. I
distinctly remember Stereo Love was playing at Vinitha’s wedding, probably not
for the only time, when my cousin Vikram told me that he had gotten back
together with his old girlfriend Sheila, a wonderful girl he ended up marrying
had having two (for now) adorable kids with. Stereo Love, with its own windy
tune, became our (self-appointed) anthem of the wedding week. It was
omnipresent at all the major events of the week. It was there for it all. If
ever I hear that song, I immediately can return to a place where I’m at the
palace grounds, feeling the brilliant wind on my hair, looking one direction at
the palace lighted in chartruse and gold, and the other end with a long garden.
Stereo Love was the song, but love was the anthem, the love between the two
people who brought us all together to profess that love (To you, Vinitha and
Chinny, I thank you for opening your home to me, and to Chinny for always
remembering my name after that first meeting that week). The love between 13
cousins, or more really (sorry, Anthony, Maria and their three kids), 10
cousins, aged 35 to 19. The love between a family of 26 (alive), living the
legacy of a Patriarch (Grandpa Harry) and Matriarch (Mummy – as we all called
her) that started in Lighthouse Hill all those years ago. Love was the real story of
that week, and if it takes an Edward Maya song to make me return to there, then
so be it, because there is no place I would rather return to ever.
EPILOGUE
- March,
2014
OK, so I did actually write this three years later. I
wrote versions of this piece in 2011 itself, but never found anything that made
sense or seemed interesting. Back then, all I could think about writing for the
wedding was about how fun it was. That’s not very exciting. Now that I’m a
working person, I feel like I can get away with admitting and revealing more
(whether right or not) about my family, so it comes across better now.
Also, in full disclosure, I wrote this slightly drunk on the
Streets of Krakow. I don’t know what that says about me other than maybe my
Uncle’s wife was right to not challenge me. Unless, of course, you think this
was incoherent, in which case Thank God she didn’t.
The last few paragraphs may come across a little sad, where
I’m longing about a time that will never come back, when I was college and didn’t
have the problems that exist in the real world, and when all but one living
member of our immediate extended family could meet up. And that’s because it
is, in a way. My cousin Marie, as I’ve alluded to a lot, had a wedding that
October, and while it included about 90% of the main people Vinitha’s did, it
was also 90% as fun. It wasn’t the same. It was great. I loved it. I enjoyed
it. I could probably bang out a 3-part series on it if I wanted. I can’t stress
this enough, the way Marie and Ryan prepared that event is something that I can
only hope to match with my bride one day. It was ridiculously well-planned, and it
all came about perfect in the little hamlet of St. Augustine, Florida. That all
said, it wasn’t that week in India.
Over the course of writing this short four part story (and I
say short because none of the first three parts were as long as ANY of my real
entries in my RTW diary) I realized that the real star was time. It wasn’t
India, or Bangalore, or the people, but this perfect meeting of time. This
perfect little period where none of us were too young to not be able to
experience something and none of us were too old to not want to. That mixture
will never happen again. Heck, if I look ahead to my wedding, my youngest Uncle
(“The Oldest Cousin”) will probably by past 50, and I will have cousins over 40
and my cousins will have kids who are above 20. Tell me that will be the same?
No, nothing will be the same.
Of course, it helps that I was in college at the time and
just old enough to really do stuff, and my cousins were all willing. As I’ve
said previously, it really was a perfect time. That said every time I’ve met
those cousins since them they’ve been just as willing to have that type of fun,
to those that were there at Marie’s wedding, to my two visits to India since
The Wedding, to even my trip to Houston just one month ago to visit Vikram (to
say nothing of Vikram’s and my serendipitous meeting in Sydney last April).
Maybe I’m overrating this, but I don’t think so.
As time goes on, we all have responsibilities that we grow
into. Hell, more and more I realize that even then other than me, and my sister
who had just graduated but hadn’t started her first job, everyone else had
responsibilities. Still, maybe It was because for most of us we were in a
foreign country, or it was the initial ‘Pinto’ family reunion for years and
years we were all able to put those responsibilities aside that it worked. It created this amazing little period where
the pressures we all faced individually were all put aside.
Over the years, Stereo Love has become a stronger and
stronger connection to that period of time. Even now, if I play it over the
speakers in my car, I can return to that scene at the wedding, that immaculate
feeling that this is what life should be. In the next ten years, I hope to meet someone I can
spend the rest of the my life with. I can only hope at the celebration of my
and that person’s love, most of my extended family on the ‘Pinto’ side (of
course, on the ‘Menezes’ side as well, but they’re not relevant to this
mini-sage) will attend. Hopefully to all of them it will be as fun as that week
in India celebrating Vinitha and Chinny’s love. I can only hope there will be a
song that comes out around that time that is as connecting to our experience as
Stereo Love was to my (and my sister’s) experience in India. I hope that
happens, as I hope it happens with my own sister’s wedding, to say nothing of
my cousins Andy, Roy or Dhiraj (the three cousin’s older than my sister that
are not married). I can hope, but it probably won’t unless one of us decides to
get married in the Bangalore Palace Grounds.
In (final) conclusion, I can’t thank my Cousin Vinitha, her
husband Chinny, and her Parents, my Aunt Carmel and Uncle Peter enough. Because
of their work, I was given the week of a lifetime, and the memories of that week
that will last hopefully as long. I’m a pessimist by nature at times,
especially when it comes to memories of the past. This is bad. I wish I was
different and I wish I could change that. Because of this nature, I will always
be a little sad that nothing will really ever live up to that week in
Bangalore. Nothing at all, not even my own wedding. Outside of marrying the
person I love, the rest of my wedding won’t match it. But that said,
I was old enough then that I will always have the memories. Maybe, on day come
2030, Stereo Love will come on the loudspeaker, and I can immediately transport
myself to that place, to that point in time, and feel what it felt to be alive
and free and connected to my family closer than I ever have been. Until then,
and no doubt I will write about that moment a lot, let Edward May and Vika
Jugalina play you out…
