Spending ‘first night’ with an IODEX bottle

Atlast I got my leave. I didn’t want to think back what all strategies I have applied to get my leave. That was also only two days before my marriage. My friends told that I was very lucky to get leave two days before the marriage. There was some history with some person who was ready to tie the knot got a call from a tanker lorry driver asking for load. I shouldn't be that much luckier. I knew that next two days would be the busiest days in my life. I didn't think what I have to wear for my wedding. I thought I would plan it while I was traveling to my house by train. I knew that I had got very less time to plan and execute the most important happening of my life. Here in South India, marriage is a matter of half an hour ceremony. While comparing with a North Indian marriage, you wouldn't have anything to remember in South Indian marriage. With in an eye blink, you and your partner would be declared as man and wife. After that there would be an extensive photo session with all of your relatives and friends. That might take hours to complete. In between you couldn't even get time to go to loo atleast. If something had happened like that, people would have remembered you as the person who went to loo in between his marriage for your entire life time. Never I wanted an adjective like that for me.

After indoor drama, your photographer and videographer would take you and your partner to outdoors for another session of exhaustion. For most of the shots they would keep you aside as a silent viewer and they would explore your bride through their camera eye after taking your money. You could not blame them at all. You had told them to do so and made payment. A week after you would probably get an edited version of your videography in a CD or photographs in an album. You never knew how much they have explored your bride under the camera eye. You kept the CD and Album for your life time as a  memory of your priceless moment or for a proof of document if sometime you or your partner might  gone through some acute memory break down about your relationship. I knew that my marriage would be also like the same. I didn't want to change the system, even if I was not happy with the system.

Atlast the day had arrived before me. My last few hours to loose my bachelorhood. I knew that, today, I would be the center of attraction to each and everyone around me. Some body would be always around me, sometimes advising or teasing or doing whatever they could do against a scape goat. For that particular day I also had to stand under spot light for hours, completely drenched in my sweat, but with a charming smile. Initially I thought a lot stupidity about these married life. Two three years back I was very determined not to get in to any settled life. But slowly I realized that my fate wouldn't be the different one. I thought, my friends would be there for my entire life. But I was false. They also shrunk to a small cocoon of their family after their marriage. They didn't get free time to spend with me. After some time I felt I was becoming more and more alone. So finally I had to surrender for the constant pressure from my parents and relatives. The moment they got my nod to proceed, every one started to look for a suitable girl for me. I didn't know why they are so excited? Were they really happy to see me settling in a life or Were they happy that I came back to normal social life? But every week after that when I came to my home to spend my off-day, my mother would deliver me a heap of matches which I would have to search down.

It became a routine that I would be sitting with my parents and my sister with possible matches around our dinning table to select the most appropriate match. After so many discussions, combinations, horoscope match making, we all decided Sanjana would be my life partner for this life time. I also accepted their decision. But actually I had small liking towards her from initial time itself while I was viewing her photograph. I bribed my sister terribly to support for me to select Sanjana. Fortunately our horoscope also matched. Balance decisions were decided by elders. But before marriage itself we used to spend more time in phone and in chatting like new age couples. So I was sure that my hands wouldn't be shivering while I was tying the knot.

Everything went fine on that day. My hands wouldn't shiver much. I never stumbled in between. We smiled and chatted with every one who wished us for an excellent future life. We posed brilliantly for the photos and videos like professional models. By evening, everything was settled and we were ours own by then. People finally started to go back. I felt lot relaxed. I lied down in my sofa. Sanjana already taken over kitchen for preparing dinner with my mother like a dutiful daughter-in-law. I got up from my short nap after an hour when my mother called me to come for dinner. Sanjana was already helping my mother for serving the dinner when I came to dinning room. I was impressed by her smartness to handle her in-laws in a very short span of time. My mother forcefully made her to sit with me and herself served for me and Sanjana. We never felt that Sanjana was a new comer or never she made us to felt like that.

From that day onwards we wouldn't be having separate rooms, separate wardrobes or separate beds. We had to adjust with my small room in the first floor corridor. After dinner I was send ahead of  Sanjana to our bedroom. I knew that still some proceedings are left before I could get her alone. I was waiting. After some time Sanjana opened our bedroom door slowly and came inside with a glass of milk in her hand.When she approached near my side table, I went and closed the door of our bedroom. Then I came and sit near to her on the bed. Next second, somebody was knocking our bedroom door.Sanjana went and opened the door. It was my sister with a tray full of fruits and some lighted agarbathi. I thought for what heck people was doing all these like in movies. She came inside our bedroom and placed the tray on the top of the side table. Before opening the door itself, I smartly moved to my study table and acted like I was busy with some works in laptop.She sat with Sanjana on the bed and started chatting and giggling in low voice that I couldn’t hear at all. I took that moment to reply my mails and scraps that my friends and colleague had sent to me regarding my marriage. While chatting with my sister, Sanjana was occasionally looking at me also. 

After half an hour, I shut down my laptop and acted like I was very sleepy. My sister got my silent order to leave us alone. She stopped in between and shown some kind of hand signal to Sanjana before leaving from the room. As soon as she gone out, I closed and bolted our room door. When I turned back, Sanjana was smiling at me. I felt like a fool. I came and sat beside her on the bed. She started teasing me about my uncomfortability in the last half an hour. But I counter attacked her, about her smart acting infront of my parents to impress them.We started our life with a small fake fight. I felt I was going to be very happy. I felt I was lucky. But my first night suddenly changed in seconds like a DOCOMO advertisement.

The pillow I was holding in my hand slipped from my lap. Sanjana volunteered to take it from the floor. Her movement was quick to grab it. But after getting it she came back with a deep moaning sound. I knew something had happened. I asked her what? She answered exactly like the MOOV ad. "My back ". I understood that her sudden movement hurted her back. I felt sorry. she lied down in our bed. I could read from her face that it hurt very badly. I started to slowly rub her back. Then I decided it would be good if I did with a balm. I started searching for any balm in my table drawer and wardrobe also. I couldn't find anything. I thought I would ask my mother.I opened my bedroom door and started to climb down the stairs. Sanjana was calling from behind lying down on the bed and uttering some thing like" Don't disturb them in this late hours, I am ok". But I didn't wait to listen that.I knocked the door of my parent's beedroom. My mother came and opened the door. She asked what had happened. I explained her the whole thing and asked her for the balm.She went inside and switched on the lamp. My father also woken up by the light. He also started enquiring what happened. I told him nothing. Mean while my mother found out the Iodex bottle. Instead of giving it to me, she voluntarily came for the service of her daughter in law. When she stepped inside, Sanajana tried to stood up. But her paining back didn't allow her to move. My mother started massaging her back. But after sometime she decided that with balm it wouldn't get relieved. She thought of taking hot water massage. She went back to kitchen for boiling water without listening the resistance from Sanjana. My mother given me the bottle of Iodex with silent order to massage Sanjana's back until her return. With no time my sister also made her presence in our room and she started laughing. Sanjana also started smiling. I thought they were making me fool. I thought that these all were a part of drama they have planned earlier.Meantime my mother returned back. She told like a command that Sanjana would be sleeping today in my parent's bedroom with my mother and sister. Before that she could undergo hot water massage. My father had been already shifted to my sisiter's bedroom. Then she helped Sanajna to get up. With support of my mother on one-side and sister on other side she stood up and started walking towards the stairs to ground floor to my parent's beedroom where she would be spending her first night. For the last time in that night she looked back and gave my a very naughty sweet smile. It was like a "black forest" pastery had been taken away from my plate. I smiled back like a fool.

Why it had happened to me? Upto then it was perfect. But it suddenly had an unexpected climax like in a Maniratnam movie. I got my leave perfectly. My marriage was not disturbed my any distant sitting bosses for any reports or by any tanker lorry fellow for loads. But this was not an expected end to end a marriage day. I always thought on my school days,why an apple had fallen on the head of Issac Newton. It could have fell on thousand others head.Like that why it has happened to me or why the pillow fallen down at that moment or why Sanajana volunteered to take the pillow from floor. Another unanswerable question to the scientific world.In some where between that desperate thoughts I fallen into sleep with a Iodex bottle in my hand on my "Suhhagrrath".