What's love got to do with my Punjab? Attending an Indian wedding with an ex-girlfriend

On the drive from Ahmedabad to Sundarna, we passed sprawled cities, filthy crowds, piles of burning garbage, driving past cows in the road and an endless sea of human gristle, all with little dots on their foreheads. We stop in some kind of human traffic jam and urchins crawls all over our car, tapping on the windows, looking for handouts. I have a powerful, passionate and overwhelming apathy that allows me to remain blind to their suffering as I mutter “misery loves company.” Brant is equally apathetic and declares “of course the glass is half empty! What are you blind?” Eventually the tangle of flesh clears and we stagger forward through the morning fog. Soon, the cities give way to a more pastoral landscape of golden mustard seed, the traffic thins out, and we reach the unheard-of speed of 50 km/hr. We watch the landscape change gradually and monkeys resurface alongside the road, now unafraid of their human counter-parts who often threaten to eat them. We are headed for a remote village to attend an Indian wedding ceremony.

I am accompanied by Brant Wilkinson, a teacher at Salinas High School and my best friend in Salinas, a man who can kill me with laughter without even trying and shares my grim view of humanity. Brant was invited to the wedding by his former student whose brother has been roped into marriage by his rather large Indian family in the classic “arranged” Indian way. I am merely crashing the wedding, and I have brought along a friend of mine from college, Laurel Kalish who smiles and does interesting things with her life and who I am going to marry.

For the duration of the wedding. We do this merely to avoid confusion and questioning. Older generation Indians simply refuse to understand how two people of opposite genders who can marginally tolerate one another and have some reasonable amount of compatibility could fail to marry one another. Any explanation we could offer would be met with the international sign of complete confusion, recognizable in the thizz-face-like expression of the befuddled local who will not “wipe that stupid look off [his] face” until you tell him something he can understand like “we’re waiting to get my father’s permission” or something. Telling people you’re already married can avoid awkwardness in any culture really. For me, a source of great bitterness and heartbreak is the recent memory of Jason Goldman’s wedding wherein I was questioned as to when I was going to marry my then girlfriend (whatsername I forget) to which she immediately replied without hesitation or remorse “oh us? We’re not getting married.” It’s better just to get married for a few days and live in a romantic fantasy world and then return to reality.

The taxi moves through the alleyways in the small town of Sundarna, and Brant notices that “it’s so crowded! It’s almost like there’s 1.2 billion of them. Where’s Vikram?” They’re all little Vikrams, and as much as this sounds like a racist comment, it’s quite true as all of these people are related to Vikram in some obscure way. We find the real Vikram next to a cow with his cell phone in hand, the perfect image of the modern Indian anachronism. We exchange introductions and greetings, and then we begin a process which will take several days—the process of meeting the family. After awhile, Vikram introduces people using a clever trick which absolves us of the obligation of actually learning their names. He simply says “John this is my other Uncle.” It makes sense.

We arrived at just about the right time for lunch. In the massive courtyard which has been temporarily converted into a dining hall, there is a large full-color banner which displays Vikram, his brother Jayvir Patel (the betrothed) alongside their mother and grandmother. Above the family, there is a little floating head of someone who looks photo-shopped into this family portrait. I ask Brant if he recognizes this man whom we have not met but is displayed as an integral part of the family unit in this portrait. Brant tells the story of the Patel American Dream, which he recounts according to his best memories of the event(s).

The Patel Family moved to Salinas California when Vikram and Jayvir were children, or perhaps before they were born, I don’t remember. They immediately purchased a convenience store, apparently unconcerned about reinforcing that old stereotype. This was of course in the worst part of town. After several years of the type of happy living that’s possible only for the recently immigrated that are working toward a “better future,” life took that tragic American turn, and there was violence in the East Salinas Kwik-E- Mart. Mr. Patel dove in front of a bullet to save his son and was killed, which explains why I have not yet heard the words “John this is my father.”

But the enormous family soldiers on, benefactors of the cultural stoicism that has witnessed death and hardship since before the time of Buddha, and ever since. I am not surprised when I don’t hear the words “John, this is my step-father.” Vikram’s mother is a widow for life, evidence of the triumph of the old world over the new world, a battle just as ambiguous and unresolved as the battle between nature and nurture.

As Laurel is whisked off to the “girls’ side” of today’s festivities, we realize that old world wins as long as the relatives and the ever watchful eyes of propriety are present. And they will always be present. So for the moment, despite her arrival into my life just a night earlier, after a 3 year absence, Laurel is gone to begin preparing for the wedding with the girls, and to talk (no doubt) about whatever it is girls discuss when they are doing each other’s hair. I think this may have been a good thing despite my reluctance to part with her, because Laurel has purchased three Saris and has no idea how to wear them.

Brant and I wander around the wedding ceremonies for awhile, absorbing the old world wedding music which has live singers, horns of some kind, and an assortment of drums. When the song ends, the mooing of cows complements the brief silence before the next song begins. We follow the band as it marches down the street in the fashion of a spontaneous parade, until we are strong-armed off the street and into the house of yet another relative.

We sit and drink Chai-Tea in this new and unfamiliar house belonging to Vikram’s other aunt, and are received as honored guests there as well. As we sit and pour tea from the cup to the saucer, slurping it loudly as per the custom, we notice that people from the village are walking in and out of the house freely without warning or invitation. During a wedding, it is explained to us, the whole village is as communal property. This presents a unique contrast to Salinas where walking into a neighbors house unannounced is likely to result in a shooting. It seems quaint and warm to me, but that is only until someone walks into the room where I am changing into my wedding clothes. All notions of privacy that I have heretofore relied upon are gone now, and I must ready myself to share the floor where I will sleep tonight alongside12 strangers.

As we sit and talk with the relatives, we can’t help but bring up some of the infamous events in the history of Gujarat, and Ahmedabad, the closest large city. Although this region seems peaceful now, we are told not to stray too far into the “Muslim area of town.” As recently as two years ago, a band of Muslim zealots hi-jacked a train and slaughtered it’s occupants as a protest over India-Pakistan relations, which many interpret through the lens of Muslim-Hindu relations. As revenge for the massacre, Hindu residents of Gujarat went to every Muslim household and killed the father of the family, in many cases burning them alive in front of their families. The women and children were made to march out of the province and into Pakistan. Owing to the fact that civil servants in India are intolerably corrupt, the police did nothing. The events seem almost forgotten now, beyond the warning to stay away from the Muslim areas. Even in this volatile environment, members of this family fear America and love their home, a sentiment that is mirrored by my American friends in reverse. "I'm mortified that you're in India" was one reaction to my travels. I'm sure that someone in the Patel family could be heard uttering "I'm mortified that you're going to America" to the young married couple, in the relatively obscure language of Gujarati, somewhere past the braying sound of the cows.