Ten years on

Sing to the mountains, sing to the sea
Raise your voices, sing His Praise
This is the day the Lord has made
We will be glad and rejoice.

  Entrance hymn for Mass on 15th May 2020

Our 10th wedding anniversary was celebrated under restrictions of Lockdown 3.  We put on a brave face and decided to make it memorable in whatever way we could. Ten years had skipped by so fast. Marked by togetherness, love and sharing, it almost seemed like ten days or ten hours.

My sister was the first to call. Then came calls from my brother and his family. Our aunt and uncle from Bombay called in the afternoon and in the evening my nieces and their family from Bombay wished us. Thus the day was upheld by a bouquet of  calls from the family which was fitting  - being international day of the family.

After a hearty breakfast of chole -poori we sallied forth to Panjim. We were on a mission to pick up mutton. Queenie had decided to make mutton biryani. Before we left we recorded a 30-second video  for AIR Panjim where I moonlight as an RJ.

Having reached home, Queenie cooked the biryani.  We were about to listen to the recorded Mass when aunty and uncle from Kharghar called. We made it a video call and it felt like we were physically together in our joy. Uncle and aunty recalled how they made available a flat for my use in Marol, on the days I used to come from Delhi to see Queenie.

The opening hymn of the Mass stunned us and seemed to echo our thoughts. (See verse above) It really seemed that 15th May was the day the Lord had made.

The biryani was awesome. I served chilled Bud beer from the last bottle standing after Dwayne's First Holy Communion celebrations on 12th January 2020.  The desert was delicious mankurada mangoes. All the while we had all the lights on and the hall was bathed in the full luminescence of the chandelier, the lamps and the tube lights.

The music I had chosen was the Te Deum CD of the Santa Cecilia choir of the seminary of Rachol, Goa. The divine music upheld the moment and we felt complete in each other.  Te Deum i.e. Thanksgiving in Latin was the tenor of the day as we had so much to be thankful for. In ten years so much had fallen into place.

At 5 p.m. we sat down to watch our wedding video. As we did so Queenie's family from Kurla called. It was exciting as at that very moment the video shooting was going on in the bride's house on the video. They young nieces saw themselves in the video as we spoke on WhatsApp video. Thus it was a technology-enabled anniversary!

It has always been our practice to watch our wedding video on the anniversary of our wedding. For this singular pleasure, I thought it fit to call Sylvester who did the wedding video for us a decade ago. Taking his number from the wedding video itself I chanced a call to the mobile number. He picked up. He said he always tried to give the best quality. I sent him a freeze shot of him from the wedding video. (right)

As the video played we reached back to those moments when time stood still. Many people who moved and danced sprightly were no longer with us today. The video grab above skirted by black suggested how memories are etched with sadness. But we remember those who had gone before us for the noble lives they lived.

Going down memory lane can lead to a spiral that can loop you into the past. One needs to stay positive and live in the reality of the present - and be thankful for the lives we have now.

In the evening we squeezed in time to take a walk together and enjoy each other's company.

An invigorating shower with the smell of fresh towels made me feel we were in a resort to celebrate the day.

Just before we went to bed we noticed that Dwayne had made the bed just the way we make it before we go to sleep. During the day he emerged from his room with a card for us.

These little things made the day so special.
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Pix (clockwise from top) courtesy spruce.com; a van loaded with provisions makes the turn towards Verem on empty roads; Queenie, Dwayne, me and the biryani; video-maker Sylvester pursing his lips in concentration during the live recording of the wedding on 15 May 2010. All pix by Brian Mendonca on 15th May 2020.