Sideways on a Scooter (41 page)

“Oh, thank you. I borrowed it.”

She turned me around to inspect me from behind.

“Best-quality sari. Even the foreign girls can look nice in a sari like this. You must have already done your marriage?”

I responded with a curt yes, hoping to discourage her. No luck.

“And where is the boy?”

I told her he didn’t live in India now, and she shook her head: “All alone. You American girls are not like Indian peoples. We are feeling sad even if we eat breakfast alone. But I have cousin in U.S. who says you people are eating your dinner in front of TV!”

She wandered off, still shaking her head. I wasn’t alone for long. A male relative of someone lurched unsteadily toward me: “I was seeing you up on the dance floor. You need to learn better the Bollywood moves. Then you will be looking better.”

“You’re right, Uncle, I certainly have some room for improvement.”

“And what about the bush?”

“I’m sorry, Uncle?” I asked, not realizing he’d segued into a discussion of American politics.

“Your Am-
reek-
a president should help us with Pakistan problem. Many terrorists are there! Is the Bush the India friend?”

I backed away, saying I wanted to catch Geeta’s debut on the dance floor. I could hear one of her favorite Bollywood numbers, “Bole Chudiya,” starting up. I caught sight of her near the elevated platform. A brassy group of aunties was trying to force Ramesh onstage with her. If the bride was to dance at all, they declared, she would do so with her groom.

“I can’t dance to this music.… I don’t even know Bollywood,” I heard Ramesh plead. He caught sight of me in the crowd and shouted frantically in my direction, “I’m used to dancing to American hip-hop!”

This only inspired further hilarity among the aunties.

“Hip-hop! Hip-hop! What is this?” they cried.

I certainly wasn’t about to call any more attention to myself than I already had, and since none of Ramesh’s American friends had come to the wedding, there was no one else to explain the concept. I imagined Ramesh was kind of glad none of his friends were there now, because the aunties seemed determined to humiliate him. As he shuffled stiffly back and forth to the song, his eyes darted through the crowd, on the
lookout for the brashest auntie. Twice she dashed onto the dance floor and shoved the couple closer together, to the hoots of the others: “Go on and get close! Get some practice for later!”

You would have thought it was they, not their husbands, who’d been downing whiskey all night.

I was learning that inappropriate behavior becomes briefly acceptable at Punjabi weddings. The bride’s female relatives are actually
expected
to flirt with the groom and taunt him about his sexual prowess. Such dramatics are not the norm at the pious South Indian weddings Ramesh and his relatives were accustomed to. I caught sight of Ramesh’s older sister watching the spectacle, or
tamasha
, on the dance floor; she certainly wasn’t dancing. Her face was a pale, expressionless circle amid the raucous crowd. She and her husband were teetotalers; there had been no drinking or dancing at their wedding, and I doubt she cracked a smile on her wedding day.

Boisterousness has limits at a Punjabi wedding, too. I could tell Geeta was trying not to laugh too much or too loud, her mother’s invocation of a grinning monkey surely on her mind. The aunties may have earned the right to act ridiculous after decades of acting the part of well-mannered wives, but they knew where to draw the line. When the wedding photographer tried to take pictures of Geeta dancing, they shooed him away. During the official photo session, I heard them plead with her to stop smiling: “Please,
betee
, try to look like a bride. Look a little shy for the photographer!”

It was late when we got back that night, and it took us forever to untie one another’s saris—their time intensiveness is one of the reasons saris are no longer popular as daily wear. Once we were finally ready for bed, though, Geeta still wouldn’t let me and Anku go to sleep. She insisted that she had to spend the last night of her unmarried life going through her wedding wardrobe one final time—with us watching. She called her younger cousins in from the other room, and they flopped down on the bed beside us.

Geeta’s bridal show had become a regular event during our Patiala evenings. She’d snap open her brand-new suitcases—she loved their satisfying pop, I could tell—and pull out a selection of honeymoon wear
to model for us. She’d fret aloud about whether she’d made the right shopping decisions and what to wear with what; and then fold it all back into her matching luggage. I swear she took as much pleasure in repacking the clothes as she did in trying them on.

She held up a sundress: “Do you think it’s too short?”

“Yes!” the cousins chimed on cue.

Geeta laughed knowingly, as if to say, “Someday, little ones, you too will be buying cute little numbers for your honeymoons.”

“Will you be able to wear that in your new home?” asked Geeta’s fifteen-year-old cousin Chandni.

“Hardly,” scoffed Geeta. “This is just for the honeymoon. Once I get to Ramesh’s house, I’ll be dressing for his parents.… Hopefully they will be nice to me. New brides used to be treated like princesses, but now so many in-laws are making slaves out of their
bahus
. I don’t know why it changed.”

Chandni had apparently been educating herself about wedding rituals. She piped up about the
churas
—the thick, heavy bracelets that the uncle adorns the wrists of the Punjabi bride with before she is married.

“You better keep on your wedding bracelets after the wedding, Geeta-
deedee
,” Chandni told her. “As long as you’re wearing them, your in-laws aren’t supposed to make you do any housework.”

Geeta rewarded her cousin with a luminous bridal smile for her research.

“Believe me, I plan to wear them for as long as I can.”

Pooja Shourie’s face, taut with anxiety, was the sight that greeted me when I opened my eyes on Geeta’s wedding day. I groaned, stiff from a bad night of sleep squeezed three deep on the bed. Geeta sat up beside me, and I could feel her body tensing with adrenaline. Her mother’s hands were grasped around her daughter’s morning mug of hot milk as she stood over the bed. She reminded her, yet again, that the bride is not supposed to leave the house before the hour of her wedding.

Geeta and her mother had been fighting about this for months. Pooja reminded her almost daily that in the old days, the bride was
forbidden to leave the house unaccompanied at all during the entire engagement period. Geeta waved her mother off with an impatient hand; she was happy to embrace some aspects of tradition, but not if they interfered with her primping sessions, and obviously, the salon was essential today. She’d already scheduled two appointments between prayer ceremonies. Since the marriage rites weren’t happening until three the following morning—the hour that the
pujari
had deemed astrologically auspicious for the union—she assured her mother there would be plenty of time for it all.

Geeta’s mother turned to me and said, in quavering Hindi, “
Betee
, promise you will go with our Geeta. This day, above all days, you must not let the bride out of your sight.”

I promised not to leave her alone, consoling myself with the thought that I’d be able to disappear into my book at the salon.

When we got back, Geeta’s female relatives were already gathering for the
chura
ceremony. The aunties were a flock of pastel-colored
salwar kameez
outfits, cross-legged on the living room floor, singing a mournful Punjabi folk song. The family
pujari
, in a crisp white kurta, was setting up a shrine in the center of the room. He lit a small fire and laid out offerings of marigold flowers and coconut pieces. Geeta tugged her
dupatta
over her hair and joined the women around the fire.

Her uncle came forward and showed the priest the box of wedding bracelets, in the traditional magenta and white; they used to be made of ivory, but since it is now banned, these were bone. The priest chanted a prayer and purified them by dipping them into a bowl of buttermilk. Geeta’s uncle slid them onto her wrists, twenty-one wide bands for each arm. By the time all forty-two
churas
were on her arms, the women’s song had risen to a keening.

“Our daughter is leaving us. She’ll never come home again.”

The thick coating of makeup on Geeta’s face made my skin crawl. I was trying not to look at her. We’d spent at least four hours, maybe five, in the salon, getting our hair and faces done and dressing for the wedding ceremony. My head was pounding from the fluorescent lights, the
chemical hair products, and the addling bleep of Geeta’s cell phone. It didn’t help that the hairdressers had styled my hair in an updo, pulling it so tight on my scalp that my eyes felt perpetually widened. Geeta asked whether she was wearing too much makeup, and I told her, again, that she looked like the perfect Indian bride, which was a tricky way of not answering the question. She knew what I meant, though.

After her first makeup session, she’d insisted they call the manager.

“My fiancé didn’t want me to be a traditional bride. He doesn’t like this kind of look!”

The manager pretended to be patient, but he basically told her that if she wasn’t willing to don foundation, blush, and green eye shadow, she wasn’t fit to be married. Even after half a dozen attempts to tone down her makeup, Geeta’s face still glittered like a performer’s. She’d lost the battle, and we were late for her wedding. The bride was not showing her teeth.

She rapped impatiently on the window of her father’s car in the parking lot. Sanjay, the family chauffeur, was curled up in the driver’s seat, steaming the windows up with his breath. He jolted awake, wiping the drool from his mouth as he fumbled to unlock the doors. He’d been waiting for hours while we beautified and rebeautified. I wondered whether he’d eaten. Sanjay was wearing one of his two polyester button-downs, the collar threadbare from hundreds of washes. His mother must wash them on alternate days, I thought. In the mornings, the scent of his inexpensive sandalwood soap infused the leather upholstery.

Sanjay had won the affection of Geeta’s father because he was clean and respectful, but tonight he was not ingratiating himself with the bride. He kept stealing amazed glances in the rearview mirror at this shimmering incarnation of his employer’s daughter. The attention only amplified her irritation. When we slowed to a crawl in traffic, Geeta pounded on the back of Sanjay’s seat and hollered at him to find another route. The heavy bracelets clattered unmusically on her arms.

“
Deedee
madam,” he protested feebly in self-taught English, “no other road is there. Several-several weddings happening. All guests are in jam.”

It was true. The Patiala streets were clogged with wedding-goers. Hindu astrologers had deemed this fall and winter an auspicious time for marriage, prompting families to fast-track potential alliances. On one propitious winter night, the
Times of India
reported, close to ten thousand couples tied the knot in Delhi alone. Geeta sighed in Sanjay’s direction and started working her cell phone. Eventually she got hold of Ramesh’s cousin, who told her that the groom’s party was nowhere close to the wedding venue, either.

Her fiancé was winding his way on foot, in a North Indian marriage procession called a
baraat
. Complete with fireworks, a drumming troupe, and a brass band, grooms’
baraat
processions routinely clog city streets during India’s winter wedding season. Ramesh’s guests were encircled by a protective constellation of lamp wallahs, a cluster of underfed boys carrying lamps attached to diesel generators that kept the lights and music of the procession going. At the tail end of the
baraat
, Ramesh sat astride a rented white mare, looking the picture of the heroic North Indian groom. In fact, he was miserable—deafened by the celebratory ruckus, his vision obscured by the elaborate headpiece and veil he’d agreed to wear in another concession to Punjabi wedding tradition. In the South, grooms rarely ride horses to their weddings, nor are they expected to don headgear.

The Murthys and their guests were familiar with these rituals only from Bollywood films, but they did their best to go along with them. They tried to dance in the Punjabi bhangra style, arms raised above their heads. The February cold dampened their enthusiasm, though. These were warm-weather Bangaloreans, unaccustomed to the midnight chill of the Punjabi plains.

In the car, Geeta fidgeted with the tassels on her
lehnga choli
. Like the American bride who spends months hunting for the perfect poufy white dress, Geeta and her mother had scoured boutiques in five cities before she’d found one she was satisfied with. The garment she’d settled on was brilliant pink, heavy with embroidery and sequin work; Geeta had joked that she’d lose weight just by wearing it. At this moment, though, she was devoid of a sense of humor.

“Pleeease hurry, Sanjay!” she urged, to no apparent end, since we were sitting in immobile traffic.

“Madams, what can be done?” His face in the rearview mirror was wretched. He would have picked her up and carried her if that hadn’t meant abandoning her father’s car on the street.

Geeta turned, disgusted, from Sanjay’s reflection, and faced me directly for the first time during the ride. We were getting close now: The air was discordant with wedding brass bands, firecrackers, and honking horns. The festive sounds seemed to distress her further. In the half-light of the car, her face was an unreadable shimmer, and her voice was shaking.

“I guarantee everyone else here is a Punjabi marrying another Punjabi. Naturally—we are in the Punjab, and that’s what people do. Only I had to be different. My mother always says that there’s a reason the traditional arranged marriage worked for so many centuries: If you’re going to be with someone for seven lifetimes, you better have a lot in common.”

Geeta wasn’t trying to be funny. She’d said before that she thought there was nothing more beautiful than the idea of an alliance so perfect that you would be reincarnated together. Now that she was on the brink of formalizing her own marriage, though, she seemed to be considering the seven lifetimes with trepidation, rather than with romanticized glee.