This is the last part of the Kidnapping and the Wedding story. This was continued from…
That evening, after dinner, I went outside to enjoy the evening air and get some work done. Everyone else was getting ready for bed. Then Shyni came out and asked me, “Are you ready to come in for sleep?”
“No, I am not tired yet. I’ll just stay out here and get some writing done. You go on and go to bed, I’ll come in later.”
Then Shyni got nervous. I could tell she did not know what to say. “You should come in to bed now,” was all that she could say. I decided not to object and just go with the flow. She took me into the bedroom and then told me, “My mother kicked me out of her bed.”
Not understanding I replied, “What? But I thought that we couldn’t sleep together until the temple marriage.”
“My mother told me that now I am a married woman and I should sleep with my husband.” Shyni was very nervous now. Her voice went really low. I could barely hear her. “Michael, I hope that you won’t be upset, but I don’t want to have sex until after the temple marriage. I can sleep on the floor if you like and you can have the bed.”
“No, of course not! I won’t let you sleep on the floor. I can share your bed without having sex.” I could not believe my luck. I was happy to get closer to Shyni even if I had to hold back and wait. Besides, having sex with my virgin wife in a tiny family home, with the rest of her family sleeping an ear’s shot away did not seem right to me either. And it would not be the first time I had slept with a woman and not had sex, not by a long shot. I knew I could control myself.
It was a single bed and neither of us got much slept that first night. We talked a little about our lives. I held Shyni in my arms most of the night. I kissed the back of her head affectionately many times. I kept my hands from wandering that first night, but it was is impossible to lie in such a tiny bed without feeling her firm young breasts pressing against the backs of my hands. I laid there drinking it all in and it felt wonderful. Over the next few nights Shyni allowed me to caress her body more, but she made it clear I was not to get carried away. She allowed me to kiss her on the cheeks and lips, but would not return the kisses. When I asked her why, she said that had to wait until after the temple marriage.
This arrangement gave us time to get to know each other slowly. In bed Shyni was very cuddly and even affectionate with me; in public she kept her distance. Thus my final fears were alleviated. It was both difficult and wonderful to sleep with Shyni; she remained a virgin until we were on our honeymoon.
I lived with Shyni’s family, in a small and simple Indian home with dirt floors. The actual bedroom we slept in is shown in the pictures in the previous chapter. They had no running water, only a well. At this time of the year the well water was nearly dry. The water was only suitable for certain cleaning tasks and flushing the toilet. For cooking and bathing water Shyni and her mother carried many four gallon vessels of water about half a kilometer on their heads.
Shyni boiled water for my bath every day. She set up the outdoor bathroom with my bathing products and cleaned up after me. When I came out she had chosen my clothes and set them neatly on the bed for me to change into. She washed all of my clothes. Along with her mother, Shyni prepared all of my meals, served them to me, and cleaned up afterwards. The food they made was fantastic, but if I did not like something I was able to tell her. She did not take offense, she did not complain, she did not even hold negative thoughts about my comments. If she had, I would have felt it. The next time she fed me she had taken into account anything I had told her about my likes and dislikes. With my late wife Kathryn, after my second or third “constructive criticism” of her meals, she told me, “From now on you can be the cook.”
I was not used to the kind of treatment Shyni was giving me; I was being treated like a king. All of her life Shyni dreamed of being married and being a housewife. Many times she told me that her greatest wish was to be the very best wife she could be. She was very happy to do these things for me. It showed in the way she did them. I felt loved and pampered.
Every morning I would take a walk alone into the forest of the wild animal preserve. I would climb to the top of the small hill for my morning meditation. I took my camera with me the first few times hoping I would find Elephants or Tigers or other interesting wildlife to photograph. One morning I had gotten tired of carrying the camera and was about to leave it behind when I felt the intuition to take the camera with me. That is the morning I met the Elephants. That story is in my blog The Elephants of India.
Shyni was very playful too and loved to joke around. We were counting down the days before our marriage. When we woke up I would tell her, “Only X more sleeps before the wedding.” One morning she corrected me, and told me it’s Saturday not Sunday. I was confused. How could I get it wrong? I’ve been counting down the days. But I accepted her correction…until later that day when I was out buying a chicken for the evening meal. I did not have correct change and the man told me, “Okay, you come back Monday to pay.”
To which I replied, “Monday, I can come back tomorrow.”
And he replied, “Tomorrow is Monday.”
I wasn’t sure he understood English very well. Most of them didn’t. I said, “No today is Saturday,” and I picked up the newspaper that was on his table to show him and it said Sunday. “Arrggg! Shyni, you got me!” I cried out loud. The shopkeeper just looked at me and laughed. Shyni too had a good laugh when I returned home and let her know I had figured it out.
The night before our wedding I had to sleep at the home-stay. If I knew then what I know now I would have selected a different place to stay, but Shyni did not tell me about the abduction and that Sandhya was involved so I packed up a bag and checked into my room. I returned to Shyni’s family home for dinner. By that time many friends and relatives had arrived and were either coming or going. One of them had painted Shyni’s hands with henna. My first reaction was that I wanted to object, but I kept it in. I never really liked that sort of thing, but it was a beautiful work of art, and I did not want to put a damper on the evening, so I let it go.
I took some photographs of Shyni’s hands painted with henna. One of them is on the cover of my book, Unforgettable. More than a year later, when I gave the cover design artist the photos of Shyni’s hennaed hands, I had no idea if she would use them or not. But the resulting book cover was perfect with those hands on them because it fits perfectly with events in the story. When I showed Shyni the book’s cover art she told me, “Many years ago a psychic man told me that my hands would be famous all over the world one day. I did not believe him, I thought he was crazy. Now I know it will be true.”
The next day Shyam and some of his male relatives came over to my room and dressed me for the wedding. Yes, except for my underwear, they actually dressed me. That is the Hindu tradition. They also brought a photographer who took heaps of photos. They came so early in the morning that there were still a few hours to go before I had to leave for the wedding, so they returned to the family home and I got undressed and went back to sleep. I hadn’t slept much that night and was now very sleepy. When I awoke I had to dress myself for the wedding.
The temple marriage ceremony was a fantastic experience and very different than a western style marriage. About sixty people attended the ceremony and two hundred people showed up for the wedding banquet. Most of these people were Shyni’s relatives. One couple, a British woman and an Egyptian man, who owned a local hotel came as well as one other European who I had met came to the ceremony. Shyni has a very large family.
A few days after the accident and the abduction I ended up having to purchase the motorbike from Mohammad otherwise there would have been trouble… in the end there was much more trouble, but that happens later in the story. Shyni warned me not to trust Mohammad. I should have heeded her warning.
Continue reading the next chapter – The Honeymoon and the Truth about Eju.
Love and Blessings,
Michael Skowronski
Author of Unforgettable: A Love and Spiritual Growth Story
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Being able to reprogram ourselves is a very important skill to have. If you can reprogram yourself then you can choose who you want to be and set out to make it so. It is particularly useful when you discover some automatic behavior; either a thought or action, that is causing you to suffer.
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