Bala Devi, Girl-Child Avatar - Book Two - Holiday in Kodaikanal

Chapter Fifteen - The Wedding

Chapter Fifteen

The Wedding

The horoscopes came back from Chennai by registered post. ‘Good Alliance’ was scrawled across the top, and then in the body of the astrological predictions it said, “These two souls have walked the same path together for life-times. No one can ever come between them, not even the God of Love. Compatible in all aspects. Children and riches will be accrued. Santosham!!”

Sarojini’s eyes gleamed with a light akin to hysteria and immediately the compound went into high gear.

“Oh, good! We’ll have a wedding to end all weddings,” she cried. But even Sarojini could not have foreseen the outcome of this wedding!

Dear, lovely Uma, product of a Bangalore slum, with no mother and the daughter of an alcoholic father, was bowled over. “They want to celebrate my wedding, Bala?”

A lightning call was placed to Bala’s parents and it was decided that they would both come up, along with a bus of Uma’s companions—the students from the Sunflower schools which Bala and her mother started for the slum children. Uma’s father was also to come up in the bus.

Syamala, Bala’s mother, was very excited. “I will go shopping tomorrow,” she said, “and I’ll bring a wedding saree, mangala sutra, gold bangles and necklaces and of course, the rings and all the other trimmings. What colour saree? Okay, red it will be. Oh, this is such fun! Does the boy expect a dowry? We don’t believe in it, you know?”

The bus which was to bring the Sunflower kids was loaded with baskets of fruit and vegetables, bags of rice, wheat and pulses, and great rounds of cheddar and pannier cheeses, as well as all the spices needed in Indian cooking. Syamala was in a frenzy of buying and so sarees were purchased for each of the guests, including the Kerala people and the tribals, and lunges for all the men. As an 57

afterthought, she asked the number of children so that each might have a toy to remember the wedding.

“Oh, weddings are such fun,” she kept repeating, as Adithya drove her home with another load of things. Poot Trishul simply sat, shaking his head in disbelief.

Meanwhile, at a corner table of the restaurant outside Madurai, a man in dark glasses sat drinking heavily.

“Hey, Boss, your girl is getting married to the horse-trader.”

Mehta started. “Talk sense,” he growled. “What girlfriend?”

“That Uma from Bangalore, the pretty one.” Mehta turned his head.

“Big wedding at the compound. The one you lost, remember? Big celebration. Why you were not invited, Boss?” The man was obviously drunk and looking for a show-down, as they called it in the old Wild West days of the US.

He got it! Mehta threw his glass of whiskey in the man’s face with a few very unpleasant words.

“Shut up!” Mehta said. “Shut your mouth. Don’t say her name. It’s the name of a goddess and it will poison your filthy mouth, you pig.”

Mehta, minus the earring and red hair, still looked like a goonda, dressed in a black leather jacket and green polyester slacks. Now he hurled the offended gentleman across the room, breaking up a few tables before he stumbled out of the restaurant mumbling to himself.

“Boss is loosing it,” muttered the man who wanted Mehta’s job. He picked himself up off the floor smiling. “And someone may just be ready to take over very soon.”

Mehta collapsed in the back seat of his jeep and thought about Uma. Visions of her pretty young form rolled before his eyes like a reel of celluloid film. “We could have been something great together,” he mumbled. “I can’t believe you didn’t have feelings for me too, Uma. If you had faith in me, I could have been the top man of all the gangs around here, but now…..” He guzzled a bottle of beer. “Maybe it’s not too late for us! Hey! What did they call those things in the Mahabharatha? Swa…something..when Krishna rescued Rukmini and married her. I think it was Rukmini. I’ll go and rescue you from that horse-trader. That’s what I’ll do!!