The difference between a marriage and a wedding is not just semantics. You can attend a lot of weddings, but you only end up attending one marriage. (Ok, for some of us 2 -3). Off late, I have been diagnosed with wedding phobia. The first symptom is that you don’t feel good about spending one hour queuing for your one second of fame – with a bride / groom who don’t know you from Adam. Actually you don’t really want to add to their misery. Doing continuous surya namaskars at the reception, as they seek blessings from any white haired person who dare come on stage. Being totally white haired now, have resolved not to make stage appearances. Too old to be a hero – and too young to be an in-law. But there are still times when you get emotionally blackmailed in attending a wedding. 

So the other day, I landed up at a destination wedding, of the daughter of a childhood friend. The destination was Lonavala – about 60 km from where I stay. The original plan was to cycle down – but then cycling back on the Mumbai Pune highway at midnight sounded a little mad even to a MadMan. So I did the next best thing, I cycled to the railway station – with a plan to take a local train to Lonavala. Hunting for suitable parking at the station meant that I missed the local – and had to pay double the fare to catch the next Express train – which btw, took the same time to reach Lonavala as the local. No wonder, Railways are converting their long distance trains to look like local trains now. Managed to just jump into the General Compartment. The compartment was nicely packed – with the only standing place near the loo. As the stations rolled by, and more people squeezed in, I had to adopt a crane like posture – of standing on one leg – as the compartment ran out of leg room. Very soon even the toilets were full of one legged cranes! 

Time is a great healer. And after an hour – miraculously salvation appeared in the form of the destination – Lonavala. The wedding destination though was still 3 km away. Having carried a Bill Bryson book with me, along with two books for the bride and groom, I decided that it would be a good idea to have a nice walk to Tungarli village. Ohh and btw, one of the gifted books was a story of a divorce – never too late to plan for the future for this young generation. Found a nice walking companion – and unfortunately just as the conversation had started becoming interesting, the companion’s rickshaw driver friend passed by, and offered him a lift in his empty rickshaw. Yours truly was also graciously invited to join in. Just as I was patting myself on my very painful back, I realised that the lift was for only a hundred meters. And after that, like Johny bhai, I kept on walking. 

And finally arrived at the ‘destination.’ Ever wondered how it is for a sane person to roam around in a mental asylum? Or vice versa? To get that feeling, all you have to do is to wear your T shirts and shorts – and land up at a wedding, where everybody is in three piece coats and kanjeevaram sarees. The destination resort had 10 gates and a hundred security guards at every gate. I kept on walking past gates, hoping to find one which was less secure. The walls were tall, so jumping in was out of question. Having arrived at a gate which was probably the last one, I mustered courage to accost the security. There was a 10 kg wedding invitation that had been couriered to me, which had already been turned to craft work by my daughters. The security guy had reason not to trust a guy in T shirts and shorts, who was obviously trying to gate crash a wedding – which had no relation to his social standing. Fortunately the bride’s mom had been kind enough to WhatsApp a copy of the card. With grudging respect for technology, the guard – let down his guard, and asked me to squeeze myself in between the bars of the gate. 

The card had invited me to land up at 4 pm for the Baraat. It seemed to be a one man wedding. Because the only other people in the resort seemed to be two very harried young women – who I realised were the wedding planners. They were clutching their heads – as things obviously were not going as per plan. All the guests were asleep in their destination rooms. Everyone had had a night out the previous night. The planners informed me that akha resort apun ka hai – and I could go park myself anywhere I wanted. So I landed up in the restaurant and joined an unplanned couple, who had just landed up from Mumbai. They invited me to have tea, but being a tea-totaller, I politely refused. But you know how it is with Indian hospitality, kuch to lena padega. So I settled for water. In a jiffy, the young waitress made an appearance with a bottle of mineral water. To her surprise, she had encountered, probably for the first time in her not very long life, a guest who insisted on tap water. And she vanished. 

In the meantime, I downloaded the entire history of the unplanned couple. Was a typical upper middle class – all engineer family. Husband engineer. Wife engineer. Son engineer. Daughter engineer. But what I liked best was that they had driven down from Mumbai in their newest toy – the Hyundai Kona. For the uninitiated in the religion of plastic haters, the Kona is the Shiv and Vishnu of electric vehicles in India. With a 300 km range – and 50 kW motor, it beats the rest of the meagre competition black and blue. I managed to squeeze in a word or two about our own small electric Mahindra E2O. But what was more fun was to understand the shipping industry – which our friend was part of. Did you know that the Liquified Natural Gas carriers used to have spherical tanks. But the ship designers found that they were transporting more steel than gas that way. So they went back to wood. And now the gas is carried in giant wooden boxes, with some hi-fi membranes which can survive the -170 degree C temperature of the supercooled gas. There is no on board cooling, so the gas keeps on evaporating as the journey happens. And cleverly the ship has engines that run on this evaporated gas. Unfortunately, at this juncture, the young waitress arrived. She had finally managed to locate a tap. And I had my water.

There were still no signs of the Rip Van Winkles waking up from sleep. So I went over to the lawns – and took out my secret weapon in fighting wedding wars. The US has its gun culture – and the anti-plastic brigade has its own gun equivalents – books. In the next three hours, I managed to finish Bill Bryson’s magnum opus – More Notes from a Small Island. Appetized by so much knowledge about the island of Great Britain, I was now looking out for fodder for the stomach. Apart from the army of mosquitoes that were emerging from the pond next door, I managed to find some more life on the lawns. And it was no other than our young waitress. I bravely ventured from my table to her counter – and meekly enquired – about the presence of something which we can take for granted in all Indian weddings – starters. And yes, the wedding planner had menu-ed out a dozen starters. I asked for – and received – a sample of all the dozen. 

Satiated, it was now time for me to leave. With only one hitch, you gotta mark out your attendance. I started looking around for proxies. And just then I heard the voices of distant drums. And hope sprang, for it looked like the guests had finally woken up from their slumbers. And lo and behold, I managed to find not one, but 4 proxies roaming around. People I knew and had met before, who could vouch to the bride’s mother – that MadMan had indeed come and partaken of the grand feast laid out to celebrate the betrothal of her offspring. Managed to dump off my gifts of books on to one of the proxies – with instructions to hand it over once all the wedding lines had gotten over. 

Time to beat the retreat. Walking back at night is not as much fun as day time. For big dogs play at night. All of Tungarli’s dogs seemed to be waiting outside the destination for leftovers. As I walked out the gate, the dogs imagined that the party is over and the leftovers are being rolled out. Took a lot of convincing to let the dogs know that though I may be edible, I was still a few decades away from being roasted. 

The theme of bad planning continued. I had exactly 30 minutes to reach the railway station, buy a ticket and sprint across to platform 3 to catch the return local. The dog brigade helped increase my speed – but for a person who relishes his walks – and hates the jogs, the 7 kmph asking rate was a tall order. Desolate roads are not exactly conducive to thumbing lifts. The only humane lift-givers are the motorcyclists and the scooterwallahs. The carwallahs live in an elevated orbit, which desi lift seekers can never reach. Of the 4 two wheelers that I saw on the first 2 km of road, two were fully occupied. And two were scooterwallihs. I had almost reconciled to an hour long wait at the station for the next local train, when I decided to change tracks. Instead of using hand gestures to indicate my desperation to reach the station, I used my very strong vocal chords. In the silence of Lonavala, my voice was almost reaching the railway station. This way I managed to get an old man on a motorcycle to stop – and Allah be merciful – managed to sprint and get into my local train.  Local trains are still a place where you can find people not glued to mobiles. Was very happy to be seated next to an interesting gang of card players, who did not take out their mobiles in the entire journey. Must talk to the Swedish Science Committee to create a special category of Nobel prizes for such people. Another category of non mobile watchers must be the Bhajan singers. I have fond memories of being entertained by these guys in my daily travels from Thane to Sion, in the good old days when I used to be a coconut oil seller in Mumbai. On the subject of bhajans, I found music being piped into the compartments of this local train. Must make it a point to vote for Mr Modi next time, for they played all my favourite songs. Reached the station, and to my amazement found my cycle still standing at approximately the same spot that I had left it. And still retaining all the wheels. The tyres still had air in them. Allah was being really munificent. I cycled back in the middle of the night – arriving at what is everybody’s favourite destination – the bedroom.