by Ninad Jog
Recently I attended the wedding of my longtime friends Dip and Shawn. As they dropped me home in their van after the wedding, I thanked them for inviting me. "I felt privileged to attend it not only because was it my first gay wedding," I told them, "but also because it was the first wedding of any type—gay or straight—that I attended in the United States, even though I have lived in this country for twenty-two years."
"Really?" they gasped.
I lost no time in tweeting this fact—the fact that the wedding was a double first for me, not the fact that the newlyweds had gasped—on Facebook. When an acquaintance in India read the post, he wondered why I hadn't been invited to any weddings in over two decades.
But truth be told, that wasn't quite the case. Several of my cousins had invited me to their weddings during that period, as had a few of my friends. But those weddings took place in India, not the U.S., for the overwhelming majority of my friends were Indians in those days. Even if they were Indian immigrants to the U.S. like me, the mother country was their home ground for tying the knot.
I did attend a couple of such weddings—that of my cousin Amol and my of friends Amar and Sonali—but only because they took place in Mumbai or one of its neighboring cities when I happened to be making an annual trip to India to meet my relatives. Never did I visit India with the express purpose of attending a wedding.
Maybe the people whose weddings I skipped missed my presence, particularly my cousin Ratna. But I had my own excuses for not attending. That I hadn't accumulated enough leave from work. That the airline tickets were too expensive. That the wedding was planned at too short a notice. And so on. Never mind that the excuses didn't have much of a leg to stand on, let alone two to walk on without limping.
And always, the elephants in the room—the ones with their large floppy ears and piercing ivory tusks—went unmentioned. That I had scant appetite for sitting through the various long-drawn rituals of Indian weddings — rituals that I found to be largely inane. That as a gay man, I would never have the right to get married and the chance to participate in those very rituals that I professed to despise. That I didn't give a second thought to whether the bride and the groom missed me or not.
If my friends' weddings took place in an Indian city far from Mumbai, such as New Delhi or Chennai, it was implicitly understood that I wouldn't attend them, even if I happened to be visiting India at the time, for I limited my visits to Mumbai and Pune. My friends were gracious enough to present me their wedding invitations nonetheless—invitations that I have carefully saved to this day in the Friends bin of the plastic drawers in my closet.
***
Come to think of it, I did get invited to a wedding in America. Approximately fifteen years ago, my friend and ex-colleague Prakash invited me to his. But I didn't even come close to attending it. I didn't have too many lame excuses this time. I could have easily made the trip to Texas. I could easily afford the round-trip airline ticket from Washington, DC to Austin. I could have easily taken two days off from work.
But the room teemed with elephants. Prakash was an Indian-American. In fact, he was an American for all practical purposes, for he had migrated to the U.S. when he was just three. And although I had worked with him on a project in Atlanta, socialized extensively with him, and even gone camping with him and his friends to Arizona, I didn't feel as comfortable with him as I did with Indians like me who had emigrated to the U.S. at later ages.
And there was the little matter of his wife. She wasn't Indian; she was an American-born Chinese. How would an Indian-Chinese wedding work? Wouldn't it be ultimately a Western-style wedding, by virtue of being held in the U.S., a format that I am utterly unfamiliar with to this day? It didn't put me at ease, for I had barely begun to emerge out of my Indian cocoon despite being in America for seven year. If anyone had asked me if I was racist, I would have denied it—and vehemently so—just as I would now.
Add to that the fact that I was even more socially awkward at the time than I am now and did not feel comfortable wearing a suit and a tie. How was I supposed to conduct myself at the wedding? Who could possibly guide me? I was reminded of the movie Party from 1968, in which the comedian Peter Sellers plays a bumbling Indian guest unfamiliar with Western ways. I was afraid I'd be a similar fish out of water at the wedding. I didn't mind being cast as a comedian, but I didn't want to sell myself short by following in Sellers' footsteps.
I did not even bother to RSVP Prakash's invitation. Not surprisingly, we lost touch soon thereafter. To this day, I haven't been able to re-establish contact with him. I can't help but wonder whether my absence at his wedding played a role.
***
My earliest recollection of attending a wedding is from when I was four or five. It was Sudhir uncle's wedding, bang in the middle of Pune's monsoon season with its gray skies and intermittent drizzles. He was clearly my favorite uncle, for I remember blushing with wonder whenever he visited my home.
"Sudhir Uncle's wedding ceremony will start in a few minutes," my mother told me as we waited among the audience in the packed wedding hall. "It will be a registered marriage."
"I'll play the baaja when they arrive!" I declared firmly, brandishing the small harmonica that I was carrying.
True to my word, I played the harmonica loudly enough that my uncle and his bride heard it as they signed the marriage papers.
Over the next few years, I attended a number of weddings in Pune and Mumbai, mostly those of distant relatives. At those ages, attending weddings meant sitting cross-legged on a wooden platform, having lunch from a metal plate placed on the floor, studiously refusing to eat all the dishes they served except the mixture of rice and yellow lentil soup.
Only when I grew older did I realize that not only were they all Hindu weddings, but were also Marathi weddings, typically among people of the Brahmin caste. I also learned that Indian wedding rituals vary not only by religion, but also by region, language and caste.
***
I must have been in sixth or seventh grade when my parents and my sister and I piled into the sidecar scooter one night after dinner and traveled the seven kilometers from Khar to Dadar T. T. to attend the wedding of one of my father's colleagues.
We had been invited at 10 p.m., and there we were, on the dot. We made our way to the rooftop terrace and sat on the chairs lining the terrace wall. The music was loud, the terrace was well-decorated and the mood was festive. I remember the Bollywood hit Kabuji kabuji, gum gum! was playing. But sign of guests there was none. The bride and groom too were nowhere to be found. After a few minutes, a young couple came to the terrace and smiled at us. The woman was wearing a skirt and stockings, and what appeared to be dance shoes.
"Where's the wedding party?" my father asked them.
"They aren't here yet!" the man answered brightly. "They must be getting ready."
The minutes rolled by, but there was no sign of any of the other guests, let alone the bride and the groom. "How long can we wait like this?" my father grumbled to my mother. My mother shook her head. Come 11 p.m., my father was grumpy, I sleepy, my sister bored and my mother exasperated.
Finally, my parents could take it no more. We got up and stormed out. The music continued blaring loudly, the mood was just as festive, and the place was just as deserted. My father drove the scooter all the way home, and we were in bed by midnight. Suffice it to say that all of us were bleary-eyed and sleep-deprived the next morning—not to mention none the merrier.
That night was the closest I came to attending a Christian wedding, although it wasn't the last one I attended that operated on Indian Standard Time. To this day, I haven't attended any other Christian wedding anywhere in the world.
***
Needless to say, I haven't attended Muslim or Jewish weddings either. Or for that matter, Zoroastrian, Jain, Buddhist or Sikh ones.
I take that back, though—at least the last part of it. I did attend a Sikh wedding, but I don't remember it, for I was only two. It was the wedding of one of my father's colleagues. Or was he his boss? Or boss's son? I'm not sure; I'll have to ask. All I know is his name: Mr. Kharbanda Singh.
My parents and I went from New Delhi to Chandigarh to attend it and to do some sightseeing in the city designed by the Swiss architect Le Corbusier. As we sat with the other guests in the steaming auditorium amidst a sea of turbaned and bearded men, I sat snugly in my mother's arms. My father had covered his head with his handkerchief, while my mother had covered her head—and mine—with the loose end of her sari. For Sikh religious custom required everyone present to cover their heads.
But I had little patience for such niceties. With one deft move, I cast aside my mother's sari from my head. My mother put it back again, but I brushed it off once more.
"Let's place a handkerchief over Pingo's head," she whispered to my father.
She took a handkerchief out of her handbag and placed it over my head. When I brushed it off, she put it back on and held it there with her hand. And all the while the Sikh priests kept chanting religious rhymes, saying prayers and fanning their holy book.
And all the while, my parents kept praying that the ceremony would end soon.
Eventually my parents' prayers were answered, and they heaved a sigh of relief. Off came the loose end of the sari and the handkerchiefs. "Off from our heads" was indeed a far more palatable alternative to "Off with our heads."
"Let's not stay for the wedding lunch," my father suggested. "Let's go back to our hotel."
And that's exactly what my parents did, with I still in my mother's arms.
***
Fast forward to four decades later. I haven't been invited to any weddings in the past few years mainly because all my peers have gotten married long ago and are busy raising kids even as we speak. Or they have been forced into singlehood by choice or circumstance.
A few years ago, I expected to be invited to the wedding of Rich, a white American friend from college, for we were quite close. But that was not to be. A part of me was disappointed, of course. But a bigger part of me was relieved, for I had been apprehensive about attending what I thought would be not only my first Christian wedding, but also my first Western one, complete with its stiff formality and ridiculous rehearsals.
For although I'm no fan of Hindu weddings with their endless rituals, I like them for their seemingly impromptu and decidedly chaotic nature. While the priests are busy chanting intonations in Sanskrit—a language that hardly anyone understands—and pouring liquids from one pot to another, most of the guests largely ignore the holy men, busy as they are catching up with each other on the latest gossip.
Was I the only immigrant who hadn't attended a single wedding in the U.S. in over two decades? I decided to find out. Fortunately, I didn't have to cast a wide net. Two friends told me they hadn't attended any weddings in the U.S., although they have been in this country for around fifteen years. One was an Indian immigrant, the other a Chinese one. I felt relieved. I wasn't the only socially challenged creature lurking around. Others were kind enough to keep me company.
***
I had been looking forward to attending Dip and Shawn's wedding not only because it would be my first gay wedding and the first one in the U.S., but also because it was going be my first non-denominational one. I didn't think of Uncle Sudhir's wedding as strictly non-denominational, perhaps because it was accompanied with some pomp and ceremony. Besides, I was too young then.
I had to make sure that I reached the courthouse well in time. For shorn of its religious sheen and thereby deprived of endless rituals, the ceremony would be a short one. And there was a fat chance of it starting on Indian Standard Time, even though one of the two grooms was Indian! The slightest delay, and I would miss it in its entirety.
I thought of driving in to the city, but didn't want to take any chances. What if I got stuck in traffic? What if I didn't find parking? Finally, I took public transport to get there, and reached an hour before the ceremony was scheduled to begin. I sat on a chair in the waiting area, reading Maurice, one of E. M. Forster's works. What better way to spend time waiting for your gay friends to get married than by reading a celebrated gay novel written a hundred years ago?
The ceremony was a sheer delight. Impeccably dressed to the nines, Dip and Shawn cut splendid, confident figures. Bedecked in an orange sari, Dip's mother looked far younger than her years—and noticeably thrilled at the prospect of the wedding. If only all mothers were just as liberal, just as accepting as her! The Justice who conferred the marriage vows was a genial, portly old man who seemed to be genuinely enjoying what he was doing, as opposed to grumpily doing his job.
Afterward, Dip and Shawn graciously treated all the half a dozen or so guests to a sumptuous lunch at a highly rated Turkish and Mediterranean restaurant nearby.
***
Delightful as Dip and Shawn's wedding ceremony was, who knows when I'll get the next invitation to a wedding? I wouldn't be surprised if happens sometime in the next couple of years though, for the American Supreme Court's decision to legitimize at a Federal level the gay weddings conducted at a State level have opened the floodgates to gay weddings. Half a dozen of my gay friends and acquaintances have tied the knot, and the dominoes can only keep falling.
But if I am invited, who knows whether I will attend it? For the talents of this wedding critic at conjuring up lame excuses to avoid attending are still a formidable force to be reckoned with.
When all is said and done, I wouldn't object to attending my own wedding, though. As long as I don't forget to get married, that is. And as long as the rituals don't last for hours and hours. As the wag said, "What's mine may be yours, but what takes hours is never mine."
Recently I attended the wedding of my longtime friends Dip and Shawn. As they dropped me home in their van after the wedding, I thanked them for inviting me. "I felt privileged to attend it not only because was it my first gay wedding," I told them, "but also because it was the first wedding of any type—gay or straight—that I attended in the United States, even though I have lived in this country for twenty-two years."
"Really?" they gasped.
I lost no time in tweeting this fact—the fact that the wedding was a double first for me, not the fact that the newlyweds had gasped—on Facebook. When an acquaintance in India read the post, he wondered why I hadn't been invited to any weddings in over two decades.
But truth be told, that wasn't quite the case. Several of my cousins had invited me to their weddings during that period, as had a few of my friends. But those weddings took place in India, not the U.S., for the overwhelming majority of my friends were Indians in those days. Even if they were Indian immigrants to the U.S. like me, the mother country was their home ground for tying the knot.
I did attend a couple of such weddings—that of my cousin Amol and my of friends Amar and Sonali—but only because they took place in Mumbai or one of its neighboring cities when I happened to be making an annual trip to India to meet my relatives. Never did I visit India with the express purpose of attending a wedding.
Maybe the people whose weddings I skipped missed my presence, particularly my cousin Ratna. But I had my own excuses for not attending. That I hadn't accumulated enough leave from work. That the airline tickets were too expensive. That the wedding was planned at too short a notice. And so on. Never mind that the excuses didn't have much of a leg to stand on, let alone two to walk on without limping.
And always, the elephants in the room—the ones with their large floppy ears and piercing ivory tusks—went unmentioned. That I had scant appetite for sitting through the various long-drawn rituals of Indian weddings — rituals that I found to be largely inane. That as a gay man, I would never have the right to get married and the chance to participate in those very rituals that I professed to despise. That I didn't give a second thought to whether the bride and the groom missed me or not.
If my friends' weddings took place in an Indian city far from Mumbai, such as New Delhi or Chennai, it was implicitly understood that I wouldn't attend them, even if I happened to be visiting India at the time, for I limited my visits to Mumbai and Pune. My friends were gracious enough to present me their wedding invitations nonetheless—invitations that I have carefully saved to this day in the Friends bin of the plastic drawers in my closet.
***
Come to think of it, I did get invited to a wedding in America. Approximately fifteen years ago, my friend and ex-colleague Prakash invited me to his. But I didn't even come close to attending it. I didn't have too many lame excuses this time. I could have easily made the trip to Texas. I could easily afford the round-trip airline ticket from Washington, DC to Austin. I could have easily taken two days off from work.
But the room teemed with elephants. Prakash was an Indian-American. In fact, he was an American for all practical purposes, for he had migrated to the U.S. when he was just three. And although I had worked with him on a project in Atlanta, socialized extensively with him, and even gone camping with him and his friends to Arizona, I didn't feel as comfortable with him as I did with Indians like me who had emigrated to the U.S. at later ages.
And there was the little matter of his wife. She wasn't Indian; she was an American-born Chinese. How would an Indian-Chinese wedding work? Wouldn't it be ultimately a Western-style wedding, by virtue of being held in the U.S., a format that I am utterly unfamiliar with to this day? It didn't put me at ease, for I had barely begun to emerge out of my Indian cocoon despite being in America for seven year. If anyone had asked me if I was racist, I would have denied it—and vehemently so—just as I would now.
Add to that the fact that I was even more socially awkward at the time than I am now and did not feel comfortable wearing a suit and a tie. How was I supposed to conduct myself at the wedding? Who could possibly guide me? I was reminded of the movie Party from 1968, in which the comedian Peter Sellers plays a bumbling Indian guest unfamiliar with Western ways. I was afraid I'd be a similar fish out of water at the wedding. I didn't mind being cast as a comedian, but I didn't want to sell myself short by following in Sellers' footsteps.
I did not even bother to RSVP Prakash's invitation. Not surprisingly, we lost touch soon thereafter. To this day, I haven't been able to re-establish contact with him. I can't help but wonder whether my absence at his wedding played a role.
***
My earliest recollection of attending a wedding is from when I was four or five. It was Sudhir uncle's wedding, bang in the middle of Pune's monsoon season with its gray skies and intermittent drizzles. He was clearly my favorite uncle, for I remember blushing with wonder whenever he visited my home.
"Sudhir Uncle's wedding ceremony will start in a few minutes," my mother told me as we waited among the audience in the packed wedding hall. "It will be a registered marriage."
"I'll play the baaja when they arrive!" I declared firmly, brandishing the small harmonica that I was carrying.
True to my word, I played the harmonica loudly enough that my uncle and his bride heard it as they signed the marriage papers.
Over the next few years, I attended a number of weddings in Pune and Mumbai, mostly those of distant relatives. At those ages, attending weddings meant sitting cross-legged on a wooden platform, having lunch from a metal plate placed on the floor, studiously refusing to eat all the dishes they served except the mixture of rice and yellow lentil soup.
Only when I grew older did I realize that not only were they all Hindu weddings, but were also Marathi weddings, typically among people of the Brahmin caste. I also learned that Indian wedding rituals vary not only by religion, but also by region, language and caste.
***
I must have been in sixth or seventh grade when my parents and my sister and I piled into the sidecar scooter one night after dinner and traveled the seven kilometers from Khar to Dadar T. T. to attend the wedding of one of my father's colleagues.
We had been invited at 10 p.m., and there we were, on the dot. We made our way to the rooftop terrace and sat on the chairs lining the terrace wall. The music was loud, the terrace was well-decorated and the mood was festive. I remember the Bollywood hit Kabuji kabuji, gum gum! was playing. But sign of guests there was none. The bride and groom too were nowhere to be found. After a few minutes, a young couple came to the terrace and smiled at us. The woman was wearing a skirt and stockings, and what appeared to be dance shoes.
"Where's the wedding party?" my father asked them.
"They aren't here yet!" the man answered brightly. "They must be getting ready."
The minutes rolled by, but there was no sign of any of the other guests, let alone the bride and the groom. "How long can we wait like this?" my father grumbled to my mother. My mother shook her head. Come 11 p.m., my father was grumpy, I sleepy, my sister bored and my mother exasperated.
Finally, my parents could take it no more. We got up and stormed out. The music continued blaring loudly, the mood was just as festive, and the place was just as deserted. My father drove the scooter all the way home, and we were in bed by midnight. Suffice it to say that all of us were bleary-eyed and sleep-deprived the next morning—not to mention none the merrier.
That night was the closest I came to attending a Christian wedding, although it wasn't the last one I attended that operated on Indian Standard Time. To this day, I haven't attended any other Christian wedding anywhere in the world.
***
Needless to say, I haven't attended Muslim or Jewish weddings either. Or for that matter, Zoroastrian, Jain, Buddhist or Sikh ones.
I take that back, though—at least the last part of it. I did attend a Sikh wedding, but I don't remember it, for I was only two. It was the wedding of one of my father's colleagues. Or was he his boss? Or boss's son? I'm not sure; I'll have to ask. All I know is his name: Mr. Kharbanda Singh.
My parents and I went from New Delhi to Chandigarh to attend it and to do some sightseeing in the city designed by the Swiss architect Le Corbusier. As we sat with the other guests in the steaming auditorium amidst a sea of turbaned and bearded men, I sat snugly in my mother's arms. My father had covered his head with his handkerchief, while my mother had covered her head—and mine—with the loose end of her sari. For Sikh religious custom required everyone present to cover their heads.
But I had little patience for such niceties. With one deft move, I cast aside my mother's sari from my head. My mother put it back again, but I brushed it off once more.
"Let's place a handkerchief over Pingo's head," she whispered to my father.
She took a handkerchief out of her handbag and placed it over my head. When I brushed it off, she put it back on and held it there with her hand. And all the while the Sikh priests kept chanting religious rhymes, saying prayers and fanning their holy book.
And all the while, my parents kept praying that the ceremony would end soon.
Eventually my parents' prayers were answered, and they heaved a sigh of relief. Off came the loose end of the sari and the handkerchiefs. "Off from our heads" was indeed a far more palatable alternative to "Off with our heads."
"Let's not stay for the wedding lunch," my father suggested. "Let's go back to our hotel."
And that's exactly what my parents did, with I still in my mother's arms.
***
Fast forward to four decades later. I haven't been invited to any weddings in the past few years mainly because all my peers have gotten married long ago and are busy raising kids even as we speak. Or they have been forced into singlehood by choice or circumstance.
A few years ago, I expected to be invited to the wedding of Rich, a white American friend from college, for we were quite close. But that was not to be. A part of me was disappointed, of course. But a bigger part of me was relieved, for I had been apprehensive about attending what I thought would be not only my first Christian wedding, but also my first Western one, complete with its stiff formality and ridiculous rehearsals.
For although I'm no fan of Hindu weddings with their endless rituals, I like them for their seemingly impromptu and decidedly chaotic nature. While the priests are busy chanting intonations in Sanskrit—a language that hardly anyone understands—and pouring liquids from one pot to another, most of the guests largely ignore the holy men, busy as they are catching up with each other on the latest gossip.
Was I the only immigrant who hadn't attended a single wedding in the U.S. in over two decades? I decided to find out. Fortunately, I didn't have to cast a wide net. Two friends told me they hadn't attended any weddings in the U.S., although they have been in this country for around fifteen years. One was an Indian immigrant, the other a Chinese one. I felt relieved. I wasn't the only socially challenged creature lurking around. Others were kind enough to keep me company.
***
I had been looking forward to attending Dip and Shawn's wedding not only because it would be my first gay wedding and the first one in the U.S., but also because it was going be my first non-denominational one. I didn't think of Uncle Sudhir's wedding as strictly non-denominational, perhaps because it was accompanied with some pomp and ceremony. Besides, I was too young then.
I had to make sure that I reached the courthouse well in time. For shorn of its religious sheen and thereby deprived of endless rituals, the ceremony would be a short one. And there was a fat chance of it starting on Indian Standard Time, even though one of the two grooms was Indian! The slightest delay, and I would miss it in its entirety.
I thought of driving in to the city, but didn't want to take any chances. What if I got stuck in traffic? What if I didn't find parking? Finally, I took public transport to get there, and reached an hour before the ceremony was scheduled to begin. I sat on a chair in the waiting area, reading Maurice, one of E. M. Forster's works. What better way to spend time waiting for your gay friends to get married than by reading a celebrated gay novel written a hundred years ago?
The ceremony was a sheer delight. Impeccably dressed to the nines, Dip and Shawn cut splendid, confident figures. Bedecked in an orange sari, Dip's mother looked far younger than her years—and noticeably thrilled at the prospect of the wedding. If only all mothers were just as liberal, just as accepting as her! The Justice who conferred the marriage vows was a genial, portly old man who seemed to be genuinely enjoying what he was doing, as opposed to grumpily doing his job.
Afterward, Dip and Shawn graciously treated all the half a dozen or so guests to a sumptuous lunch at a highly rated Turkish and Mediterranean restaurant nearby.
***
Delightful as Dip and Shawn's wedding ceremony was, who knows when I'll get the next invitation to a wedding? I wouldn't be surprised if happens sometime in the next couple of years though, for the American Supreme Court's decision to legitimize at a Federal level the gay weddings conducted at a State level have opened the floodgates to gay weddings. Half a dozen of my gay friends and acquaintances have tied the knot, and the dominoes can only keep falling.
But if I am invited, who knows whether I will attend it? For the talents of this wedding critic at conjuring up lame excuses to avoid attending are still a formidable force to be reckoned with.
When all is said and done, I wouldn't object to attending my own wedding, though. As long as I don't forget to get married, that is. And as long as the rituals don't last for hours and hours. As the wag said, "What's mine may be yours, but what takes hours is never mine."
1 comment:
Loved the post. Very amusing and thought provoking at the same time.
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