Cheryl and I had secretly been dating since the first year of Law college in Bangalore. But because she is Chinese and I am a Marathi Brahmin, we both knew that there was no way on earth that our parents would allow us to get married. So from the time we got serious about each other, we had an escape plan.
‘After college, I will get a job in Bangalore itself, you do the same and without telling anyone we will do a court marriage and live together till we have enough money to be fully independent. Once we have enough, we’ll tell our parents that we are married and then face the consequences.’ We were smart. We did not want to face inconveniences just because our parents had cultural and religious biases;.
Cheryl and I were crazy for each other. We were inseparable. Always together in college and then when it was time for holidays, we would mostly lie at home and say that we had extra classes, and actually take a vacation to some part of the country, together. Good for us that we were both decent students, and our grades made our parents believe that the ‘extra classes’ were indeed helpful. The one time of the year that we did have to go back to our respective homes, however, (mostly Diwali time) - we both used to be miserable.
Five years passed, our elopement plan was fool-proof. But unfortunately we were placed in our respective hometowns only. She, in Kolkata and I, in Mumbai. And we were totally caught off guard. ‘What are we supposed to do now?’ She asked me. ‘How do we live together?’ I honestly did not know - so we planned to confess to our parents and hope that they understand.
So one morning, during breakfast, we both, separately, spoke to our parents. And not only did they understand, they were overjoyed. Both sets of parents were so happy that they wanted us to immediately make the families meet so that a wedding could be planned. It turns out that our parents didn’t even care about religion, ethnicity etc. But we were not ready for this acceptance.
Cheryl and I had worked very hard on our escape plan. We had romanticized the thought for at least three years now and we did not want to have it so easy. ‘Everyone has a ‘normal’ wedding, I want the thrill that we had looked forward to’, she said. So we decided to still go ahead with our eloping plan - just for feels.
So we both told our parents that we are going to Bangalore for a college reunion and would be back in four days. Cheryl and I met outside our campus and she had got us a court marriage date for the next day. Our best friends from college signed as witnesses and we did end up going ahead with the run-away marriage of our dreams. We returned to our hometowns and continued to live life as if nothing had happened. Without telling our parents.
About five months later, once again, we tied the knot in the presence of family and friends. One might wonder what was the need to do the court-marriage when this was happening anyway. You see, all the wedding planning was finally done by our parents and extended family, the runaway wedding was our plan and was going to be ours forever. So we kept the promise we had made to each other in college and we have been happily married for six years.
