A sigh of relief!

One of my most hated places in Mumbai city is the American consulate. Not that the rest of Mumbai is any more lovable for me, but this is definitely not the place i would crave for, and especially if its early morning office hours. The scene outside the consulate on the main road can be described as a swarming beehive, with all aspiring applicants buzzing in anticipation to be mated with the queen bee aka 'the consulate interviewing officer' - the only difference being that there are multiple queen bees (interviewing officers) instead of the single one in the actual beehives, and to make it worse - i have heard that in recent times the consulate has undergone expansion, meaning more queen bees, hence more drones and the worst - more buzzing!!
A typical writer would describe to u the anxiety of the applicant and how overwhelming the crowd over there makes one feel, but i guess i have something more interesting to tell - so let me detour. My recent visit to the consulate was in mid-December - while most parts of the world look forward to festivities at this time of the year, we Indians enter the sabbatical from one of the biggest festivities of our lives "weddings" - actually between the mid of December and mid of January due to Hindu calendar showing inauspicious dates weddings get stalled in India. But the brighter side of this period is that you get to see many more newly weds (those who got married in the pre-sabbatical wedding period) or newly engageds (those who are waiting to get married in the post-sabbatical wedding period)- whether you bump into them doing the new household shopping at supermarkets or in the finger-lock around the malls and movies - they seem to be ubiquitous. The American consulate on that morning was not spared of this ubiquity either!
Right in front of my eyes was a newly wed, wherein the woman's bangles were shinning so bright under the scorching sun, i almost felt i would turn blind if i looked at it for too long. I guess the idea of donning them was to just shove it into the interviewing officers' face and ask him to approve the visa as a ransom...lol. But as i said, i could not strain my eyes looking at the lady's bangles for too long, so i just bowed my head trying to spot some pebbles to trot, just then my eyes paused at another newly wed's footwear - it had some kind of mirror or reflectors (to be precise), believe me they were causing such great reflections of the shining sun that i thought when she enters the consulate office she may set the fire alarms ablaze and may give rise to an emergency situation. As it is the consulate is such a sensitive area, i thought this was the minimum precaution madam should have taken when cladding herself. Anyway, the visa rules don't make any allusions to the loud dressing sense of applicants, so the newly weds can take all liberties...and boy they were really taking liberties!
Right at the beginning of the line was a lady- who looked like she hailed from south India - i could tell from her south silk Saree - bright maroon with the golden zari conveying her newly wed status loud and clear. I wandered my eyes on her for some time - observing her obsession with the crisp pleats that she had set around her waist and bosom. I think she wanted to enter the consulate in the most prim and proper saree the interviewer would have ever seen ...as if that was the basis of getting her visa approved...lol
All around me I could see every third woman carrying a huge file like looking thing, which after a few glances around i realized, were wedding albums. They are gotten to the consulate to show the interviewer authenticity of the wedding status. As most of these ladies who travel to united states after their wedding travel as Dependants of their husband, it is an imperative to prove as much of the dependency as one possibly can. While getting bored, in the long ever-lasting queue outside the American consulate, I actually wished that one of those ladies would offer to run me through their albums - u know wedding albums are real good time-pass activities.
Looking for more entertaining stuff i ran my eyes across the length of the line to see what proportion of interviewees were newly wed. They say - Indian weddings, no matter in whichever part of India, never disappoint u with their celebration. Even, as the celebration of weddings died they echoed in 70% of the interviewees that day at the consulate. What a statistic: Nearly 70% of Indians entering USA in the next few weeks will be newly wed!! - and we though the great Indian consumer growth story was limited to India alone...we forgot about the diaspora!!
The entertainment i had that morning was good...and it also brought back the memories from my Visa interview some 3 years ago. Of course those memories werent as entertaining because i was not applying for the newly wed dependent visa myself and neither was it the post wedding season of India (although few newly weds were still seen- u know na recession ho ya inflation India mein shaadiyan to hoti hi hain.
When i had awed at the album carrying newly weds 3 years ago, my coworker had mocked me then - he said "Don't laugh at them, for all u know u could be standing here in this line in the next few months, carrying the load of your wedding album"...I had laughed at his comment resenting it from my heart and shrugging off at it because you never know what the future has in store for you. Three years later, i was still laughing at that comment, only much more confident this time and sighing relief at the fact that i never got into that queue again!!