Day 3 - early morning

[ In the pic, from left : Archana, Shilpa and Anu ]

I woke up to some strange annoying noise; I seemed to have slept for less than a minute and it was already time to wake up ! I was stiff when I woke up because of the uncomfortable posture ( I din't want to smudge the mehandi). It was probably around 5:30am. I was groggy and din't want to wake up. But there was so much noise in the house ( made by those who slept early and woke up early - unlike us), that we could not sleep peacefully. I went down and asked for a cup of tea. My mother was already ready !! She asked me to take off the mehandi. I thought it would be an easy task and went towards the big sink in the back of the house, when I suddenly remembered that I was not supposed to use water. Oops. I was supposed to use oil and scrape off the mehandi ( which by now was dry).

So, I started scraping, and scraped and scraped. The stupid thing was taking eternity to come off. Now I regretted putting so much mehandi. After 15 minutes, only 10 % seemed to have come off and I was very annoyed. One of my aunts suggested using a butter knife to help me scrape. So, I tried that and it hurt. Ouch. Now, my sensitive skin was red. Finally I almost burst into tears and my mom came to the rescue. She asked me to sit and helped me remove the mehandi. After a while, it almost came off. Then some others helped me. My mom instructed me to get ready soon and come to the mandap. She was already leaving to arrange things with my dad. I said ok.

Next challenge: how do you take a shower when you are not supposed to use water on the mehandi. Plastic covers solved the problem. It was messy. It had Archana and Anu in splits.

The next challenge was hair style. Seetha mami helped me with it and put a nice plait with the help of artificial hair. I could not stop laughing when I saw myself in the mirror. I wore a beige valkallam silk saree. This was the only time I wore gold jewellery. I hate gold. I refused to wear it. Finally I agreed to wear it for just one occasion - the vrata puja in the morning.

Did I mention breakfast ? I did not get any as usual. The kitchen was obviously closed. I was hungry as expected and was grateful to the cereal bar that I had with me. I was looking forward to the breakfast in the mandap which was supposed to be good.

My friend Prasanna landed from Chennai and called me. We asked her to take a taxi and come to the mandap to avoid repeating Archana's experience.

Anu, Archana and I were ready to leave to the mandap. It was 8am.