Hum

Chapter 9: Hum

We began our next day with morning prayer and offered home made prasad cooked by us to our Bhagwan Krishna and Goddess Rukmini and everyone too. As always, we prepared breakfast. There was a blend of both countries food be it Indian or English. However, today we decided to indulge in take and treats too. We made many homemade desserts using brown sugar like toffees, cakes and so on. In these 8 years, we celebrated many festivals with orphanage, old age homes, underprivileged and disabled people. Today we have distributed those treats by portraying Santa Claus and since everyone was here, we really enjoyed the time sharing this day, this year's Christmas with them. Two days later we both gave our interview in the same bank which is one of the top rated banks of London in internship position and same designation. After two days of our interview, we were confirmed that they have accepted both of us to work with them in their bank as interns in the finance section which will be paid in good numbers. We are allocated in the same team and since we have knowledge on law, we will oversee and examine any legal matters related to our jobs in the bank. However, we won't directly work in law. Our jobs will begin from the first day or date of the first month. We have to work on weekdays that are from Monday to Friday from 09:00 to 17:00. Since we are beginning to work, we decided to use only cash as a means of financial transactions be it in London, India or anywhere else in the world. In fact, we wouldn't even have any bank accounts or any type of cards for financial use neither here nor elsewhere. We wouldn't keep anything be it money, important documents, jewelry or any other assets in the bank, neither in London nor in India or anywhere else because we don't want to take any interest from the bank and don't want to give others for safe keeping as well. The bank's working calendar is January to December and is the same in a bank in India which we are planning to apply after completing this internship. We celebrated our first job and also New Year's Eve two days later with much more enthusiasm just like we celebrated Christmas. As a gift during New Year's Day for getting our first job and completing our studies, both Roy and Das families gave us a gift. They bought a safe for us by distributing the money in half. We call the safe as Safe B and kept Safe B in our main bedroom of Das house only in our first year of internship and for safekeeping itself too. After our first week of internship, our family went back to India while we stayed here in London. From our first day at work, we keep track of our financial records that is how much we are using and saving based on our salary which we will continue to do in future too even after returning to India. Apart from Safe B, we even bought another safe which we named as Safe A from our own first monthly salary. Along with Safe B, we even kept Safe A in our own bedroom of Das house in this year only. This year as well we will stay together like we always do in Das house. Now there are two safes in our house. We will take care of our earned money on our own by using these two safes. We will use Safe A till our end
and keep our own papers like legal and official ones such as all certificates or medals, painting things, safe ownership, any important papers, or own will in Safe A too along with money. We even decided to currently not use Safe B and use many years later to keep a bulk of money there. At one point in the far future, we won't use Safe A and instead move any important will and ownership documents from Safe A to Safe B including the monetary value. After taking these two safes in India, we will use it in the very same way too.

The year and few months have passed rather quickly as it seems, our internship was going smoothly and our family have visited us again for the second time and also possibly last time in London. We decided to have our marriage in the Bengali Indian traditional way in London this year which is last year too here for us in our families presence. Still this time too we missed the presence of Shanti Ma, Snigdha, Som, Batuk and Koyal Kaki for the same reasons as before. After all no one's education should jeopardise. Everything of the ceremonies were of families choices. We first had our engagement and ashirbaad rasaam. Sumati and Binoy gave their respective spouses engagement rings that is of Arvind and Shubra's to Anirudh and Bondita respectively. Thus Anirudh gave Bondita Arvind's ring and Bondita gave Anirudh Shubha's ring. A few days later there was a turmeric ceremony where we coloured ourselves in each other's love and care; and a day later was mehendi and sangeet ceremony where we applied henna and put each other's first name in our left palms. We were enjoying the day with lots of music, dance and laughter. Here, Bondita was also made to wear Shakhapola. Finally the day came which we awaited for a long time, our wedding. The wedding ceremony was conducted well. Surpringly, pandit ji was also arranged. Anirudh wore Arvind's wedding attire and Bondita wore Shubha's wedding attire. First Bondita was bought in a small stool carried by Trilochan and Binoy. As Bondita opened the betel leaf, Anirudh and Bondita were mesmerized seeing each other, remembering our beautiful moments where we pampered each other immensely. It's as if time skipped for us. We were brought back from our world and sat beside each other chanting mantras. Soon, we took seven vows along the holy fire. Trilochan and Binoy both performed Kanyadan rasaam where Trilochan and Binoy as Bondita's father-figure gave Anirudh the responsibility to take care of her. Next Sumati Ma and Thakuma did Bondita's Kanyadan rasaam and gave Anirudh the responsibility to always protect her from any harm. After that Anirudh took a pinch of vermilion and put on Bondita's forehead, where some fell on her nose indicating that Anirudh will love Bondita loads and it seems it's true for both of us since we love each other so much. Thus with this our wedding ceremony concluded and our marriage journey began. After our marriage, we shifted and stayed in Choudhury house till December and even took advanced salary for the month of December. We took the two safes, safe ownership papers, our certificates, medals, painting materials and cooked food or anything else that we need or wish in Choudhury house and placed those two safes in master bedroom when we shifted in that house after marriage. Two years later finally we completed our internship and gained many experiences while working in the bank. Finally we both reached India 10 years later with our family members, a week before the start of the January month.