“Today I would’ve been in Australia, having freshly brewed morning coffee at my and Tej’s little annexe. But instead, I am receiving messages and questions like, Hey Arundhati, are you fine? What about your wedding? Are you and Tej still getting married with all this mess going around? Do you think their family will be okay with the delay? What about Australia? Will your PR happen? And the questions don’t end. 

Tej and I had invested more than half of our savings in our marriage and had saved the other half for our Australian PR. Tej had received an opportunity from his sister company to move to Brisbane and we were so excited by it all. We had planned everything well in advance. 

2020 was something Tej and I had been waiting for 2 years. Ours was supposed to be inter-religion love marriage, so there were the initial hiccups of making our parents agree. But soon it was all settled. We planned for the wedding, prepared, and were full of positivity. And now we are facing nothing but distance, anger issues from our parents and huge monetary losses. We are being blamed for being too enthusiastic and not cautious enough with our planning and spending but who knew that a pandemic of this size was on its way to ruin everything.

We were supposed to get married in March but as soon as the lockdown phase started everyone and everything seemed to just shut their door on our faces. Tej and I couldn’t meet each other to discuss the delay in the wedding and to sort out money matters that we’d spent in booking the venues and the hotels for our family members who’d travel etc. and the return gifts and so much more. 

We have been talking to all the people we had booked with--some have been nice enough to return the money while some are denying the return saying that they too are at a loss, the caterer for example. As per him, he had imported all the fruits and edibles and now the stock has gone bad and he can’t return the advance we had given him. While Tej saw sense in his explanation, I felt the caterer was just trying to fleece us. And we had a big argument over it.

Instead of sharing our emotional loss, we both have been arguing over the smallest of things nowadays. It is getting difficult to manage this distance. Sometimes I think one day Tej might just wake up and say, “You know what, I don’t want to marry you anymore”. I’d die the day he’d say this. I know he won’t, we love each other a lot and this distance and the failure of our plans is getting in our way of calmness. But, all of this just seems so unreal. Like just a few months back, we had everything ready and we were so eager to stay together and within no time the situations are so that we can’t even meet each other face to face. 

The days don’t seem right, nothing seems to be okay. All the joy seems to have gone from my life. There is not a single day when Tej and I don’t have a fight over this or that. Is this pandemic going to be the end of my 5-year long relationship? Honestly,  I don’t know. I feel so sad and lonely right now. No one can understand the pain I am going through. The anguish that has taken over me--I am just falling apart. It’s like I am stuck in this circle of hopelessness and there is no one to pull me out of the feeling of disappointment. Rather, every time I try to push myself up, the thought of things not going the way I want pulls me right back into the void, even deeper this time. 

As a woman, getting married to the man I loved, had consumed all my energy for the past 6-8 months. Of course, my parents too had a lot of expectations. I’d worked hard and saved harder to have my dream wedding--destination wedding, designer lehenga, matching jewellery, booked a celebrity makeup artist and her team to be flown to the venue, handpicked return gifts, each function thought out carefully, 7 days of fun and frolic-- because I wanted my marriage to be special. I’d booked my favourite and expensive location, I’d designed the whole set up with the wedding planner, I was so invested in each and every detail, but everything was in vain. I don’t know what to do, how to overcome all this loss… I wish, this never happened…”