Meet the Parents!

I like going chronologically.. so even though I have witnessed my first bridal stress moment.. I will have to wait it out until I've finished the whole prelude.. Darn it!

Anyway, lets move on shall we? So picking up from where we left off in the last post. He finally convinced his parents to meet me. Mind you meeting his parents was the most crucial part of the entire exercise, as they were the only two people who had been (very conveniently) kept in isolation by somebody I know :P. Also, given that the ground work was not so great (I'm not blaming anyone here :D) the onus was entirely on me (How very modest I am :D)!!

There were a lot of things that were working for me that day (NOT!), below are a few examples:
1. For some reason that I can't recall, my Mom wasn't talking to me, so I had no help in picking the clothes to wear.
2. My dear Boy had tried to give me some tips on how to dress up, which really did add to the the complication. How you ask? Well.. Even though I didn't know what to wear I was absolutely sure whatever he was saying was definitely not to be worn.
3. It was a working day, so I had to cut office and meet them. ( Don't really know if it was a plus or a minus :P )
4. The image that had been painted in front of me was .. err.. how do I put it .. a little hard to impress.
5. This goes without saying right, I really needed this to work!!

Given that I was on my own primarily for the dress and make-up, I decided to wear the most Indian outfit I have ( Yup the oldest trick in the book ;) ), a quick plea to my dear God and I was ready to face the day.
My work day begins in the afternoon, so it was more or less decided that we would meet for tea. I was kind of between teams at that point, so it was relatively easy for me to slide off without getting noticed. Oh yeah.. before that, the first thing he says when he looks at me.. "Couldn't you have worn something simpler? This looks too fancy!" And at this point it becomes imperative that I tell you that I was wearing a solid black color churidar and a mustard yellow kurti (again one color) with absolutely no bling on it whatsoever. At that point gave myself a virtual pat on the back for not following his suggestions, for he would surely made me look like a monkey in a potato sack :P.

His house is 15 minutes away from the office, all this way he was trying to convince me to touch his parents feet as he also does it every time he meets my parents :P. So we finally reach, nervous as I was I did not forget to touch the feet. The moment the door opened, I dashed towards my would be Mom in Law's feet ( No matter how much a pretend to be cool and all, I did want to impress you know :P). The apparent newbie behaviour was not noticed, thank God for that! So now we're all seated and the awkward silence begins :D.

To be very frank I don't really remember the conversations we had, but they were mostly non consequential. But the subliminal messages, that's what we should be talking about! His Mom sat right next to me, I'm pretty sure that wasn't intentional as the furniture arrangement was such that there was no other way to sit. Even so, I could feel myself be inspected (very closely), that was nerve wrecking!

And then there was the food! I tell you me being this ultimate glutton will be my wrong doing some day. This is my personal advice to everyone out there, when out to do something important, do not stuff your mouth with food! His mom had made this awesome tasting kheer. This was the second time in my life I tasted such kheer, first time was made by one of my friend's Mom.. it was so awesome that it led to a fight which could have jeopardized our friendship.. that was the last day I tasted that awesome Kheer :( .. For my friend said she didn't approve of the way we had become around the kheer.. Sigh!! So where was I? Oh ya.. the Kheer, so my MIL ( I can call her that now.. can't I?) gave me this huge bowl of Kheer to eat, if I had been a normal right thinking girl I would have asked for a smaller serving.. but did I? Nooo... for two reasons
1. I didn't want to seem rude, being very honest I was damned if did and damned if I didn't
2. I just love kheer!!!

This reminds of a similar incident that happened to me during one of my viva sessions while in school. I still remember it vividly, the worst viva ever! What's the connection? Well here it is: So when I sat down in front of the examiner, he offered me a cookie, like an idiot I accepted it and happily started eating it and then my viva started, I had the very dry cookie inside my mouth which wouldn't slide down and I for sure couldn't spit it out! So what do I do? I steal the examiner's water too!! Gulp down the cookie and then tell him I don't know the answer..

Coming back to the situation at hand. And as it will be apparent I never learn. Now here I am me and the Kheer, the most awesome ever since that kheer I mentioned (mental note: Must learn how to make it!) and then came the problem.. the awkward silence was broken! Now they wanted to talk, ask questions like Where are you originally from, what do your parents do and stuff ( All of the answers were known of course.. just filling the silence type of questions) the only problem was.. my mouth was stuffed with kheer! Anyway, the kheer was easier to swallow though :) .. and then my MIL thought I needed to fed something else too ( I wasn't even halfway through the kheer bowl by that time) so she got me paneer pakoras (another favorite!!). The important thing to be mentioned here is that I was the only one of the four people in the room who was eating, everybody else was just watching me eat! Somebody a little less in love with food would have realised it, but I did not! Anyway the time was less and there was food to be finished and talks also happening alongside. Anyway it was just then when my MIL asked me to chuck the food and accompany her to another room. With a heavy heart I bid farewell to the kheer, there in that room she gave me my first gift! A really pretty clutch bag. And then she had that much dreaded heart to heart with me, you know the usual, my son is a simple kid, keep him happy and stuff <Awkward!! .. but I managed nonetheless>. With this done the meet was complete!

Sid reminded them that we had been missing from office for quite some time and now we needed to head back ( I just love my office!!) So I say bye to MIL, FIL and that awesome unfinished bowl of kheer and leave for office. ON my way back home, I asked him, "How did I do?" He said, "They looked more nervous than you did!!" Ha ha! Can't help it I'm a natural! I would have to wait till the next day for feedback, but I had already began to miss the Kheer!

When I got home, my mom was now not so angry I think she was also excited to know about how the meet went! So I told her how it went and showed her the gift :) She was happy and I was happier that she was mad at me no more!!

True there was a lot of awkwardness, but that went both ways did it not? Both for me and his parents? From what I saw in retrospect, I wasn't the only one who wanted to impress. When I look back at it now I think I can summarize it in this very simple paraphrase : "The things we do for the ones we love!"

This post took me a week to finish, I have no clue how and why! Had started in 2013 and now here we are my first post for the year I get married. 2014.. Yay!

Wishing you all a very Happy New Year!!