Stirring up Memories - Sept 8th

The Catholics across the world would know the specialty of 8th of September. It is the birthday of Mother Mary and I am a staunch believer of Mother Mary and that’s not the only reason for this day being special for me.

18 years back when my father was all anxious and making sure that his daughter gets married off to a Prince Charming who matches all his conditions, ( Yep, my father had a huge list of conditions, which could be fodder for a separate blog post in itself), a distant relative came with a proposal that kind of evoked some interest in my dad. Mine was an arranged marriage and friends who knew me then, swore on my Dad, that I will never get married looking at his conditions.

Well, my father managed to get me married and was successful in finding a guy who matched 80% of his expectations. Poor Joe, well poor me too – We are victims of my dad’s scheming or so we contend :(

Digressing from the topic that I begin to write has become more of a habit – Don’t be surprised, I am a proud Gemini. So back to the topic.

So it was on this fateful day 18 years back, Joe and I set our eyes on each other at a common friend’s wedding.

Ahh now don’t come to any conclusions – I guess Cupids missed their focus at the moment we saw each other so no arrow hit any of us, both of us never had any inner voice telling us “ This person will be your eternal foe”, I guess our intuitions went on a vacation that day ( probably together that’s why we were married), no seventh sense telling us, we would be man and wife.. no ESPs, no choirs giving a background score .. absolutely nothing.

I remember looking at the bachelor Joe and thinking .. hmm he looks a little fat( ofcourse he was, he was a good 20.5 kgs heavier than me!) but looks good.. that’s it. The relative who laboriously planned this meeting came to me and said, Vincy, that’s the boy have a good look at him. I remember replying with my nose up in the air, Ask him to take a good look at me. After our marriage Joe tells me he gave almost the same reply to my relative when told to take a good look at the girl.

Two utterly egoistic adults, perfect ingredients for an recipe to make an explosive marriage. After all the customary nuances of an quintessential arranged marriage we were married on Martyrs Day. Irony all along. We are still deciding who the martyr is amongst us :-)

We have had our fair share of battles ( oh what is a marriage without that), our ego trips (big time) and temper tantrums, but somewhere down the line, we fell for each other ( not the head over heels kind, but still the falling happened luckily in the initial days itself). We are not a “ romantic “ couple, we are very practical, but at the end of the day bury our little differences to make sure we give our son a happy family. We still fight tooth and nail, hold our differences of opinion, try ignoring each other ( never works more than some hours), but these last very short periods in time as years go by. We now have more grey matter outside our heads and guess wisdom prevails.

We are not the type to call each other every now and then, but I cannot focus when I know he is driving long distances on work or otherwise. He does not read my blogs but I make sure that I read it out aloud for him, kind of thrust it on him, ( a few of them atleast) and I realized he loves it, when one night he brought me Dale Carnegie’s book and asked me to read it aloud.

I don’t think we adore each other ( or do we?), all I know is this - In the simple chores that we do in our everyday life, Love blossoms every now and then and I guess that keeps our marriage going. We both have come a long way from our egoistic adulthoods, and I cannot think of a life without him.

So you see, it was on this day, September 8th 1994, I met my “Hero” and yes it is special :) :)