Marriage

When I married my husband, I accepted all of his culture, tradition and religion. Growing up in an open environment, it made it easy to adapt to the Indian ways. I am by far not the perfect Indian wife, but I do try hard despite being a bit lazy in my quest to learn the language.

During the wedding ceremony, my husband placed my mangalsutra around my neck as well as a bit of sindoor upon my forehead. These acts symbolically bound us as husband and wife for the rest of our lives. Many women wear their mangalsutra every single day and never remove it. In the modern world, it's sometimes tough to do that, so I wear it as often as possible. As a note, I do not wear the sindoor on my forehead, because my pale skin makes it appear as though I have banged my head.

So a few weeks ago, my mangalsutra simply broke. It was terrible, and I wasn't sure how I was going to get it fixed. I mentioned it to my friend S who is a jeweler, and she said that she was sure she could fix it. We had to buy the 22k gold and wait for it to arrive. It seemed like forever, but when it came, she fixed it immediately.

She brought it back to me today, and I was so happy. I decided to do a self portrait that included my necklace to thank my friend. She rocks. :)

P.S. Sorry that the focus isn't on the necklace itself a bit more. I had a time trying to focus with one hand and gave up and decided this would be good enough. There is a subtle glance of the gold pendant and black beads.