After the overnight journey from Bangalore to Cochin, here I am in my home with my parents. So this post comes directly from “God’s Own Country”. The first thing that you realize upon being here is how hot things are. Even at 7 in the morning when I reached here, I started sweating; and that process still continues. The overnight journey was manageable. I was really tired with all the shifting that I have had to do in the last couple of days. I had dinner from the Mallu restaurant at Madivala in Bangalore that makes its profit only by the dinner it serves to the people traveling to Kerala every night. If I were to comment on the quality of the food and the service there, this blog would no longer remain a blog intended for “family reading”. Hence I reserve my comments there. Couple of my friends – AR and SH came over to see me off – perhaps the last time this is going to happen to me as a bachelor. I desperately wanted them to come over to my place for the big betrothal weekend; but sadly work prevented them from doing so. My mom is a bit disappointed that none of them were not able to make it for what is one of my big days. But then, people do have other things to do in their lives.

The tired person that I was, I started sleeping the moment I got inside the bus. One of my friends was travelling along with me, but my sleep overpowered my quench to engage in a conversation with him. Thankfully there were no bed bugs in the seat that I was sitting; so that made my sleep quite a bit uninterrupted. I woke up a few times though, when the driver of the bus thought it was necessary to wake up the people, and when he resorted to the application of sudden brakes for accomplishing that. Overall, compared to my last few overnight journeys, this was much more comfortable than the previous ones. With no unwarranted stops in between, the journey got over in the stipulated time frame of 11 hours itself. There is always something special when you get inside Kerala. Maybe the biased Keralite in me is saying that. But the greenery outside, the small petty shops fondly called “chayakkadas”, the people all around discussing things on the newspaper – everything makes this state very unique. The inherent laziness is both the boon as well as the bane of the state.

My house in Cochin is getting ready for its first marriage. As I walked in, I saw an army of workers – from painters to plumbers to masons to carpenters in my house. Dad wanted all the work to be done and dusted with by tonight. After all, tomorrow the guests would start coming. You don’t want all these work to be there even when the guests arrive. My house does have a new look. The ugly green paint that the walls had has given way to a beautiful ivory color. I guess mom was the one who selected this color. It should go well with the new set of curtains that we have. The flooring that was a bit off at a few places has been redone; new furniture put in place. Everything looks a bit different. The last time I came here almost three weeks back, the work had just started. But now its almost done, and the house at least is all set for its first big function over the weekend.

Mom and dad are extremely thrilled with what is going to happen over the weekend. After all it’s the culmination of one of the toughest projects they have had to undertake – make me say yes to marriage; and them get me married. My mom would always say that it would have been a lot easier to get a girl married as compared to the effort that they had to put in for getting mine on track. In the morning my future in-laws came over to visit me and my family. Guess this was the pretext of what is going to happen over the betrothal day. They gave us a briefing about what is going to happen over the betrothal day. For people who don’t know, in the Catholic sect that I belong to – the Syrian Roman Catholic, the betrothal is a function hosted by the girl’s family; whereas the marriage is hosted by the guy’s family. And betrothal is a function where the marriage process is officially kick started by the church.

I am a little bit tired with the overnight journey. Now I need to have a good bath; and a small nap. There is a bit more of shopping for the weekend, which I need to do in the evening. Mom hates it when I sit in front of my laptop while I am at home. So before she starts shouting at me, I better wind up…