A Non-wedding.

I was a lone wolf. Still am. Will always be. Fiercely, willingly, happily solitary and wild and free. Nearly a year ago, I found someone just as wild to run with and I am very, very happy.

So our non-wedding happened on 26 May 2019 and I was travelling in the tiger-land of Bandhavgarh with my husband for a week after that. I am back and have so much to write, so much to write! Ours was a ‘non-wedding’ because we wanted to let our families and true friends know that we have been married in spirit ever since we fell in love with each other. This was just a wedding, held mostly for our families’ sake, for they have sacrificed so much for us and we didn’t want to hurt them by not having a ceremony at all. Plus, we had to make a few statements.

It was hardly a half-hour ceremony in the 1300 year-old gorgeous, gorgeous Bhoganandeeshwara Temple, which stands in all its breathtaking, tear-inducing glory at the foothills of Nandi Betta. It is where manifold architecture styles – from the eons of the Hoysalas, the Vijayanagara rulers, the Gangas etc – culminate. Wikipedia will lay the facts before you better. What I want to talk about is something else.

What we did do

1. We aren’t blind to some of the most poetic, timeless, symbolically meaningful wedding rituals. We aren’t rebels without a cause. We began with the Ganapati Pooje, followed by the Navagraha Pooje. Ancient India, this sacred land, its people knew so much. The shlokas make it so clear that our knowledge of the universe was so profound and vast and even its articulation has been so poetic and technically sound. Chanting of the shlokas in Samskrutam, this sweet ancient tongue, so informed, so full of wisdom, coupled with the auspicious naadaswaram made me so emotional that I had tears in my eyes many times during the ceremony.

2. We did the ‘Saptapadi’ ritual – the set of seven promises made while taking seven steps – which we both find really moving. The priest tried to manipulate one of the promises but my man and I made a fuss, rightfully, right there, in front of all the people and did only what we wanted to do.

3. Before I suggested, my man himself made me walk around the fire during saptapadi not behind him but beside him.

4. We tied the ‘maangalya’ around each other’s necks. Yes, you read that right. One thing I have always wondered about our weddings and the eventual marriage is the absence of physical evidence on a married man unlike on a woman (add toe-rings to this). So even before I brought it up, my man asked me to tie something around his neck too; equivalent to rings that both the groom and the bride wear in Catholic weddings.

One lady, an acquaintances told me how back in the days, only married men had to wear kachche panche signifying his marital status. But I can’t buy this completely because in gurukulas, unmarried boys wear kachche panche, too. Even if what the woman said were true, it’s sad that it was somehow discarded over a period of time. So I tied an owl pendent around my awesome naturalist, feminist husband’s neck. A video is made by our dear photographer-friend Venkatesh Katta and I will share it in one of my upcoming blogposts.

By the way, we both removed our maangalyas soon after coming home. They’ll forver rest in a box.

5. We looked at Vasishtha-Arundhati nakshatra in the direction they actually were that morning, unlike couples I have seen posing blindly for a picture. Call me self-righteous or smug all you want but I really love this idea of literally and symbolically looking up to a couple who were very much in the samsaara but walked the spiritual path to attain mOksha. So I did want to look at the right direction in the sky to locate the two stars.

When the priest annoyed me with a remark near the pushkarini while doing this, I showed the stars to my man with a finger I shouldn’t have used, and all my friends laughed until it echoed and made the priest feel what I wanted him to feel. You see, my man and I had explained why we’re doing what we’re doing two months ago but he tried to sneak in a few things we didn’t want to do, unexpectedly, and I am not the one to be scared of walking away from senseless things if I have to. So he got the message and kept quiet.

6. Our first invitation was like a newspaper report. There was no formal invitation. This was it.

We designed a reminder to surprise each one of our friends. We personalised these with their photos and names. I am sharing one here:

 

What we didn’t do

We excluded many rituals we both think are irrelevant, sexist and patriarchal. For instance, we didn’t do dhaare, kanyaa’daana’, which I think is not only irrelevant but even meaningless to independent women today. To be ‘given away’ as daana, I am no akki mooTe (‘a sack of rice’, my non-Kannadiga friends). I can very well take care of myself.

Mine was a non-silk (read fake silk) saree because I don’t wear silk. My grandmother and my mother tried some emotional drama saying they want to see me in a silk saree at least once, but I didn’t fall for it. My man, too, wore cotton kachche panche and shalya.

It wasn’t easy to convince our folks about any of this. Especially about serving only breakfast to our friends because the very ceremony didn’t last any longer than a half-hour. But we explained that we had invited only those people who would support us wholeheartedly and not make a fuss about little things, that we’ve kept the naysayers away. A couple of them still disappointed me personally with some uncalled-for remarks but I gave it back to them right there, loud and clear, and the rest of my people supported me.

No plastic. Breakfast was served in aDike haaLe (arecanut-leaf plates) and filter-coffee in these really cute little kullads:

There was more

There were nearly 60 people at our wedding. Weeks ago, we had picked used books for each one as a token of gratitude for their presence in our lives – carefully chosen to suit each individual’s taste in reading. Thanks to our favourites, Blossom Book House and the amazing Bookworm shops. This was perhaps the most time-consuming project which we were truly happy to do. It was fun. Each book had a personalised message, hand-written in my calligraphy pen, packed in brown recycled paper, wax-sealed and finally carried an adorable owl-stamp on top.

To my closest girls, I packed colourful, stunning jhumkis in little jute bags (cut out from a lovely fabric bought from my favourite Itsy Bitsy outlet) and fastened with twine thread.

Now, the most important thing: poetry. Being two people through whom words flow, how could our wedding happen without poetry in it? If the ceremony itself lasted for a half-hour, we read A LOT of Kannada poetry for nearly two hours. We even observed it as our monthly Kannada poetry-reading session, Padayaatre. This memory will always be the happiest for me from our wedding day.

 

Apart from the books we also gifted each other, my man also gifted me a beautiful Instax camera! The first photo I took was that of our Padayaatre group and I will always cherish and treasure it.

When my Ammaa was a little emotional before leaving the temple, I assured that she has absolutely nothing to worry about. She did continue to cry and I was heartbroken because mothers think that we ‘leave’ them after the wedding. They don’t feel this with such finality when the daughter leaves for higher studies or a job in a different city. This bothers me. And I have been living with my man almost every other day for the past 10 months anyway, so I had to stress on that, too, to make her realise that this was just a celebration, not a beginning of some unpleasant change for her. Neither of us spoke about my father that day. I still don’t know where he is and I am done mourning a man who just left irresponsibly 12 years ago. I am happy and I will continue to celebrate every single day of my life, as an individual and as a wife of someone who is as solitary as I am.

Times have changed, we really need to evolve with it emotionally and mentally, too, I told my mother. It isn’t enough if a washing machine replaces that sturdy stone on which clothes were washed, if a grinder replaces the pretty rubbo-kallu in the corner of the kitchen. Our thinking needs to change, and more urgently than anything else.

Anyway, this is just a really crude report of what happened. I was aching to share with you lovelies here. There’s zero aesthetics in this post, I know. But I will write more and share more pictures by and by. Thank you for your time and affection, reader dears. I love you all very much.