The U-Turn.

Indian Marriages are fun but it is very complex too just like an onion, you peel and peel the layers to get the best, similarly in Indian marriages there are tonnes of ceremonies that makes Indian marriages very fun as well as stressful. And when the wedding season arrives it gets very energetic around families and relatives having an upcoming marriage.
This is not a story of mine with any marriage Incident, but it’s related to it a little.

So my mother’s birthday comes in the month of wedding season. And once it was claimed that on my mother’s birthday enormous number of couples were getting married in my hometown, breaking the record of highest marriages in one day.

We were deciding a place to celebrate my mother’s birthday, and we all came to a conclusion that we will celebrate in a nearby hotel, the hotel was well known for its cuisine and class. And we decided not going anywhere far as there was news for high traffic jam alerts on roads.

My father was pretty sure that the place where we were going will have no traffic jams. We got in our car and headed towards the hotel. We crossed half of the distance in just a few minutes but as we moved ahead, we could hear the drum rolls and beats with some music and lights on the road, It was Barat going on,
(for all of my non-Indian friends barat is also a ceremony before marriage, where the relatives, family, and friends of the groom dance and enjoy a good time while whereas the groom sits on a mare while going to the marriage place)
So, that barat was going on the side of the road but still it was making trouble for the cars to move, which resulted in a traffic jam. My father in a convincing toned told us not to worry as he was sure that this jam will not take too long to get cleared.

We waited and the traffic jam got more and more complex due to some stupid drivers on the road that was in a hurry to move out of the jam so he blocks the cars in a puzzle. We were in the car for around two hours and were starving. And if the traffic doesn’t get free in one hour the hotel which we were going to celebrate my mother’s birthday will get closed.

Everyone in the traffic was honking and some less tempered ones were yelling on everyone. Now we lost our hopes and decided to go home, but we could not do that also, as we were stuck in the jam. In the car, everyone was feeling irritated as we spent almost 3-4 hours in it.

After waiting for another half hour the jam was set free and all the cars ran with speed of a bullet, but we just took a U-turn and went to a roadside restaurant where we sat on a bunk like a seat and ate some local cuisine. We waited so long just for a U-Turn, but we talked a lot that day. Or I should thank that traffic jam that held us in a car for a long time where we shared many thoughts.

That was a memorable day.

True Story.
Written By Akshat Atray.