There are instances where people come over to invite my mother personally saying she's the eldest living member in our family. That they need her blessings for this function or that event. Yet in her presence they cite an example of a person who is younger than her by 5 or 6 years to be too sick to attend the occasion and how one should be cautious about one's health and never travel at all! In short they make sure to get across the message that she should not take the personal invitation too seriously and actually attend the function! After hearing such sermons no sane person will take their invitations too seriously. At least I won't.
Why come all the way to invite personally only to say such things? Why waste an invitation card at all? And what about our time and theirs too?
I have a tough time convincing my mother that such invitations are just for namesake and not meant to be really taken seriously by her. She lives in the past and places a lot of affection on her relatives and their families.
Three weddings in three families of her late sister. Two grooms are the great grandsons and one bride is a great grand daughter.
My mom was sentimental about attending the wedding. She and my dad had married off 4of her elder sister's grandsons and granddaughters twenty five years back (the rituals part only) .... now it was their children's weddings she wanted to attend.
I booked two tickets for both of us yet I was so reluctant to go there as the vibes were not positive at all.
It was as if the families were worried that my mom would actually come down to attend those weddings. There were many reasons like she is too old to travel from Chennai to Hyderabad or to Bangalore. She must not fall down and break her hip bones or fracture her limbs during travel. In whose house will she stay...
I booked rooms at the Taj Mahal hotel on SP Road, Secunderabad as that was nearer to the marriage venue and staying was not an issue at all with hotels all over cities now.
I had no heart in attending. Mom was so enthusiastic about her travel, she had packed all her things a week before the journey! I could not break her heart either. So I prayed to God to rescue me from this agony of travelling for her sake only.
Chennai had a stint of heavy rains just for the 2 days before our journey. We were to travel on the 17th Nov, rest in the hotel room on the 18th and attend the wedding on the 19th and board the train, the same day.
It rained so badly on the 14th, 15th and 16th that I asked my mom whether she still wanted to go. She said cancel the tickets and I gladly obliged. I knew God was on my side and din't want me to go to a wedding in which people were not sincere about wanting our presence.
Similar was the case of the wedding at Bangalore, in January this year. The invitation was delivered personally but the body language, the instances quoted while inviting us, about how the elderly should not travel, etc., indicated that it was a formal and social obligation which was being enacted without meaning a word of it.
If you think these 2 invitations were instances of taking the 'cake' then I want to share taking the 'bakery' episode from the same family!
The father of the groom rang up the relatives to inform that his son was getting married on such and such date at Chennai. He wanted to 'inform' about the marriage and asked relatives not to attend the wedding! When the relatives questioned why at all he wanted to even inform when he din't mean to invite them, he said, he din't want the relatives to 'hear' of the marriage through some other outside source! I appreciated the bakery approach much better.
1. The Bangalore party's inviation clearly said 'no' to any gifts for their son. So we din't give anything.
2. There was no question of any gift for the party who just wanted us to be 'informed'.
3. We sent across a gift of cash for the Hyderabad party and in turn they sent across a saree for my mom and some wedding sweets. After we rang to thank them, they shared some wedding photos through the mail! The other two din't share even the wedding photos!!
I check for positive signals whenever we are invited for any occasion by others. I have been to a wedding where the family had just mentioned their sincere desire for us to be present at their son's wedding in Chennai, promisig to send us the invitation which never arrived. But we attended the wedding anyway!
So its not the case of just receiving the invitation card.
It is whether the invitation comes from their heart.
Mahalakshmi.
Mahalakshmi.
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Admire the honesty of the post. How true, qualities like genuiness, warmth and simplicity are all a thing of past.
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