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My Small Thin Punjabi Wedding - 4: Friday Furniture

A group of aspiring pickup artists surrounded a Pickup Guru at a bar listening to his advice. The Pickup Guru, a wise man, married and occasionally ventured out to help shy, lonely guys come out of their locked in states of static mental freeze. An extremely hot and sexy woman, all by herself walked into the bar and quickly glanced around to check the people out.

The wise man softly uttered “Some guy somewhere got very bored of this sexy woman”… and he ended there. What he meant, is now up to you single shy guys to interpret, imbibe and absorb and take it as deeper as you want to to kickstart your journey to meeting woman and finding “the one”.

For the married or hitched readers, there is another incident…

At IKEA, a very large furniture store, a couple were walking through the bedroom section (for those unaware of IKEA, it’s a Swedish furniture chain, where each store has two floors selling cheap and best furniture. Simply walking through the entire store without stopping anywhere will take one about 30 minutes).

The couple were looking at beds and bed tables, quietly and softly pushing on the mattresses to check the firmness, opening closet doors and closing them, opening and closing drawers, when they noticed a guy, all by himself staring at all the closets in the corner section. The guy simply kept staring at all the closets, occasionally breaking his hypnotic gaze to jot down numbers on his small pad, and as he did that he would murmur the numbers “35 inches, 48 inches… 68 inches minus 35 inches… uhuh… 69 inches…”

The couple looked at each other, smiled as the man spoke “Some guy somewhere has volunteered for a life of enslavement”

I heard that.

I paused, stopping jotting those numbers, and turned around to look at the couple… and we smiled.

And at that moment, the first incident flashed right in.

Two wise guys. Two different places. Seven years apart. How life has moved on, taking one from being a single guy to someone standing at IKEA trying to figure out the best furniture combination for the bedroom, so to-be-Biwi’s incoming stuff can be comfortably stored in a managed way.

Since bugs and shit are occupying most of my post office hours, I decided to drive to IKEA during lunch hours to get the other pre-marriage preps kickstarted, as they have not been touched upon for the last few weeks. But little did I realize that preparing to buy furniture for a very managed end result is not different from plunging into a major IT project like an SAP or ORACLE implementation. You take the requirements, you do your gap analysis, you propose changes and then you realize it is all not working… you start all over again.

So those visits to IKEA during lunch time… extended lunch times… ok ok… make that veeeery extended lunch times.

The transformation is so visible. The bachelor, guy talk and stuff - is shrinking, while these days I think of curtains, colors, color combinations, furniture, home… in short I’m being sucked into the family life without even realizing it. It’s keeping me so busy and occupied that I don’t think I even have a choice to “not” opt for such responsibilities. “Not” though is not an option. To-Be-Biwi has mastered the art of getting her punches through the face and head protection gear that I now seem to be wearing even in my sleep.

Then those nightmares. I see to-be-Biwi kicking my ass and laughing loud at me in the mandap as the priest is chanting mantras “YOU ARE NOW MY SLAVE HA HA HA HA”… and as she laughs the pundits mantra’s fade out in the background “om swaha… om swahaa… you are now done… swahaa”

I’m not sleeping well these days. Not because of to-be-Biwi who equally is stressed out cause of the various things happening at the same time…

And then came the call last night. A very good friend, a filmmaker decided to drop all the success he’s now beginning to get after years of struggle, to come to LA and live with me for a month and see what he wants to do here in Hollywood. A very down to earth person, he doesn’t care that he’ll be arriving the next day of the Pest companies second treatment, a time when the entire house will be in the backyard. He says it doesn’t matter, he can sleep with a bedsheet on the floor. But I care and wanna make it very comfortable for him, in this time of his internal push and pull and emotional swings.

This is getting too packed up. Too much stuff happening all around. Strangely not much is being done on the marriage front. Though the wedding is gonna be simple, slim and trim… the various things happening around it… O Boy!

I need a drink…

Ya’ll be good, stay safe and have a rocking weekend!