At the Wedding Reception

I watch the bride and bridegroom, the bride who shines in a lovely blue-green sari and the groom who looks well groomed in a brown kurta, and I smile,

They are receiving people, standing on the podium with the background decorated with flowers, meeting and greeting people, one after another, one after another.

The process goes somewhat like this: Say hello and shake hands, accept a hug, smile widely when the people congratulate, and then pose for a picture,

A picture in which there could be anywhere from just four to nearly twenty people squeezed together, 

and the groom gives a smile and so does the bride, but hers seems smaller, like she’s tired,

Which she is. She is tired, and so is the groom, for who doesn’t get exhausted when getting congratulated by dozens of people for your marriage?

But it’s the moments in between each group of people that I wait for.

For it’s then that they bond, getting just a little closer I feel. She holds him by the arm, and they laugh, or she tells him something, even when they are in the midst of a photo, from the corner of her mouth, and he listens, giving her his fully undivided attention, and it’s sweet, so sweet.

I see their expressions change, as it goes from a smile, to a slightly more serious look and back to a laugh. They welcome person after person.

The groom seems a bit confused, and I don’t blame him, for there are so many, so many, so many,

Relatives, and they’re of his bride, his girl, and it’s hard to keep up, and yet they smile winningly,

There are so many people around, girls who look like they’ve walked off fashion magazine covers, and men who look like they’ve come from the Wall Street, and others who are just there, from ordinary newspaper pictures which try to capture life in the city.

I turn back to the bride and groom, and they are tired and holding each other’s hands, ready to be by the other’s side during tiring times like these, 

And when its our turn, I congratulate them once, twice and again.

My dad assures the groom that our family tree is hard to learn and he laughs and we lean in for a photo and I congratulate once more, just once more, because it’s all so lovely and sweet, this love marriage that is happening, and I resolve to tell my best friend everything for we are both romantics,

And I ease off the podium as the next wave of people come by…..