Shaadi

Well every story ends with "they married and lived happily ever after". Let this blog entry begin from that place.

Bride: Rebecca (becky)
Groom: Kiran

Now wait a minute, have I interchanged the Bride and Groom? I used to mix up those two terms quite often but no, not this time.



Anyway Rebecca was my lecturer in college who taught Construction Management for us in the final year of Engineering. Usually in our college days, the lecturers were classified in two groups - the minority with whom we had such a great relationship that we admit frankly and goto movies and the majority with whom we just walk out (Any minister/pm reading this - we make good candidates for parliament). Rebecca was one of the few lecturers who managed to gain a neutral ground with us.

When we passed out from college, she joined another - to pursue her MBA from UK. On graduation she continued to work in UK with Babtie. She was one of the few lecturers, with whom I am still in touch via email (God bless these guys who invented internet and email). So ever since her marriage date was fixed - May 23, 2005, preparations were underway. Starting from the hotel to stay in, friends to be met, travels etc.

Departed to Hyderabad on 20th night itself, watching "Josh" along the way. Cant review this movie - slept within the first 30mins of travel. Arriving in Hyderabad, I stayed in Hotel ****** (Man, I never thought I can forget the name of this hotel but I have. Will check up the visiting card and update this later). They charged 600 ruppees per day for a non-ac room and there was no housekeeping whatsoever. Despite the apalling service the hotel had 100% occupancy ratio. Either everybody is getting fooled like me or else there is dearth of decent hotels.

Despite huge plans of site seeing (for photos in sudasudacoffee), I had to settle down with just two places in three days. One was Ramoji film city and the other was the good old museum. But then let me reserve them for separate blog entry.

Mercury was hovering above 40 and it was sapping everyone's energy. Having lived in Chennai for 21 years, I had always believed that heat will never affect me. I was proved wrong. Each day, I was taking 3 litres of water and 2.5 litres of juice yet I felt as if I would die of thirst......

So stayed put in hotel counting the hours till marriage. On the D-day met another lecturer of mine - Jessy. She and Preetha madam taught us Building Drawing. I still remember those days when I submitted my drawings either last or first. When given the freedom, came up with those school (my first drawing to get an "A"), clinic, bungalows and not to mention the Pyramid (dont know whether my classmate who is working now with Shoba, stole those drawings and built it for Infy, Bangalore. Need to check up with him some day, as to how my drawings got leaked) I tend to go off the track pretty easily. Now let me get back to marriage.

As far as the marriage itself, it went smoothly. For the first time, I had witnessed a christian marriage in person. Anyway after marriage and reception, I was back to my hotel - just in time to steal a quick nap before catching the AirDeccan flight back to Bangalore in time for work. Its another issues that Air Deccan was an utter disappointment - the pilot flew so high that ground wasnt distinguishable. Technically speaking the spatial resolution was pretty bad around 5m (I did my college project using satellite imageries)

I had setout to write about the marriage and now it seems I have written about everything except marriage. Still in this blog, I never edit anything. This is supposed to be a free flowing one and so bear with me.

BTW just wondering as to how many of you had the patience to read till this point. If you did please leave your signateure in the comments so that others can also admire your patience......

- Dheepak Ra