A filmy wedding with an action-packed climax

Anand Aravindakshan, the winner of Super Singer 5 is someone I introduce several times a year at the events I host. We always find time to catch up between work and last week at an Awards night we managed to do just that. Recently, he tied the knot with his high school sweetheart Paromita Banerjee in a beautiful Bengali style wedding at an outdoor venue, under the stars with just his close friends and family. This seems to be the biggest trend this year from the Virushka wedding to our very own super singer. He tells me that it didn’t matter what style of wedding they had, as long as he got to marry her. Getting out of the car in a ‘topo’ (traditional Bengali turban), that landed straight on the ground, leaving the crowd in splits of laughter, the evening started off on a rather funny and light note.

Wedding calls for some ‘love is in the air’ mood, so I had to ask him about his epic love story. Anand tells me they met each other in 6th grade when he joined Sankara School. They became friends and that very year he proposed to her and they started dating because they saw this in a movie. “We were best friends and we cared for each other. We practically grew up together. Sometime in Class 10 is when I realised that, what started off as kids imitating the movies was a real-time love and that if I married, she would be the girl. Later, when we went to different colleges, both of us realized that everyone had a proposal story and we can barely remember ours as a childish whim from Class 6. But I’m so happy that I did it because now I get to love and live with my best friend of 17 years for the rest of my life,” he says.

Anand tells me the parents always had an inkling that we liked each other but they told us to focus on our education, as we were young. “About two years ago, after years of surviving long distance, she calls me and says I think we should get married and I responded with when do you want to, let’s talk to the parents. It was so anti-climactic as we had planned on how we would tell our parents. We wanted to get the timing right but as they had known all along and they were cool with it. I always wanted to get to a good place in my career before talking to her parents, because when it comes to music they only knew A R Rahman. But after my Super Singer stint, I gained confidence to approach them. The meet-up was hilarious with all that Bengali and Tamil being spoken, I thanked god for English, which served as common communication platform for us. We planned for a small engagement at the Sai Baba temple, but when we landed there for some reason they had revoked the permission given to us and did not keep us posted about it. We had to sneak in to the temple and get engaged” he concludes. I wish this lovely couple with their filmy love story to have a dream run in the love story box office!

A recent visit to the gynaecologist for my annual check up and I learnt a great deal about what Chennaiites feel on this subject. One, you must be married to be visiting a gynaecologist, as the incredibly helpful staff have all entered my name as Mrs. Sahithya in the system despite me filling out a form stating that I wasn’t. It’s not just the staff, the ladies in the room who tried making conversation with me, asked if I was expecting or if my husband and I were trying for a baby? When I told them that I was here for an annual check up and the man with me is my sweet boyfriend who wanted to keep me company, they all clammed up! I was ‘persona non grata’ in that waiting room with everyone staring at me and whispering. The second thing I learnt is that, most of the women I know, don’t feel the need to visit a gynaecologist once a year or once every two years. We all go to dentists regularly for check ups, then what stops us from checking for the wellness of cavities? I get that as a society most people aren’t comfortable talking about sex, but periods and reproductive health are conversations every mother needs to have with her daughter. Talk about it with your girlfriends, hopefully ones who don’t think pulling-out is contraception or that the phases of the moon influence your fertility (oh yes! They exist) and take good care of yourself ladies!