Of Ancient Evenings and Distant Music

The title of this post has nothing to do with the post itself, but I just can't get enough of that book! Yeah so it's soppy and sappy, and probably even kitschy somehow, but it has a certain surreal fable-like quality to it and I'm a fan! Anyways, this post is not a book review, and so let me tell you what I've been up to since I was last here.

At the beginning of the week, I was thinking of what we might do for our invitations, knowing we need two separate sets, each giving the Kochi and Mumbai details respectively, and probably two sets of smaller inserts with the same details for people who need to be invited to both ceremonies. We have a small card-printing shop here in Kalina called Wedding Bells (how's that for typical :)) but, to its credit, it is a very unpretentious place and delivers what it promises - cards. Mum was with me, and from the 500-odd designs and found one we loooved. Its beautiful and I hope to be able to get dot and nodot to see it sometime soon. We might use the same one for the Kochi invitation if the folksters would like. I'm going to send them a sample this week and see what they say.

The other wedding thingie I did was to try to find a compère for the Mumbai reception. Jard recommended a certain Raymond Gonsalves (don't giggle you two :)) and I called the man. Now, he sounded "smooth" but a little too smooth for moi. All he did in the three conversations we had was talk about money. He said he had a base charge for a function up to 10 p.m. and would charge one grand extra for every additional hour that it went on for. Then he said, you see people call me all the time, and if you don't book me with money, I'll have to take someone else's booking on - it sounded fair to me. But then he said, "see I'm going to Calcutta on Monday; try to send the money really soon." - fair again. When asked about the advance payment, he said, "I usually charge a 2.5K advance, but since your reception is at an indoor venue, it might go on into the wee hours of the morning, so you will have to pay me more anyways, and so I'll take a 3k advance. This guy was starting to sound like an extortionist. Then he said, "if you want to call me in Calcutta, send me a text message first; I have all these people calling me, and I don't know if they're important to me - and every time I answer the phone I have to pay Rs.5 because I'm on national roaming". That did it for me. I am not sure I want this guy to do the reception, but Jard says he's really good. Lavina gave me another contact that she was to get but he was booked on the day of her function. His number seems to be "temporarily disconnected". A little bit of a quandary here. I hope to get some leads this week and get it finalized and out of the way.

So the to-do list for this week is pretty much the same - finalize card and master of ceremonies. Oh, and I have to pick up daddy's bandhgala (how exciting?!); I can't wait to see how it turned out! Fingers crossed! I might also go do some research on a seamstress for my Mumbai outfit. We'll see how it all goes.

Till then, I'm off to dreaming about this...

But I am more than happy to have this...

...and I'm more than sure dot will agree. Here's to covered bridges and the rest of our lives! (sigh)