Sideways on a Scooter

by Miranda Kennedy

  Radha also knew that she’d taught her daughter that her sole source of power as a new wife was the moral authority granted by good behavior. She’d warned Pushpa that the best way to win her husband’s affections was by being amenable and obedient. Otherwise, he might team up with his mother against his bride, as they’d seen happen on so many episodes of KSBKBT. If a girl didn’t meet her in-laws’ expectations, Radha had told her, she could end up in the burn ward of a Delhi public hospital.

  In the photos of Geeta’s engagement ceremony, she is poised, unsmiling, on a cushion, her fiancé beside her. A high pile of saris, jewelry, and other gifts stands beside each of them, as though the shot would be used to determine which family had spent more money on the other. Showing me the pictures, Geeta made a point to emphasize that the groom’s family is not obliged to bestow wedding gifts on the bride.

  “Everyone tells me that I’m lucky to have found this boy. Most brides get nothing from their in-laws—nothing but grief.”

  Geeta felt lucky in general these days. Since she’d quit her job, she’d been in a blissful prewedding blur. Even Nanima, who was brokenhearted that she was losing her, couldn’t begrudge Geeta’s happiness. Geeta’s skin glowed from good sleep and regular pampering sessions at Madame X. Whenever I saw her, she was either chattering away on her sturdy, made-for-India Nokia about wedding plans, or impatiently waiting for her phone to finish recharging on the wall. Now that she’d dispensed with her job, she spent her days like a true Delhi lunching lady: visiting boutiques, giving away her clothes and furniture, and helping with the wedding invitations—thick envelopes stuffed with five different invite cards, each printed in red and gold on handmade paper.

  She stopped by after the salon one day with an offer to share in her wedding joy: She wanted me to be the maid of honor at the wedding. Like other modernized Indian brides, Geeta wanted to adopt the Western concept, even though Hindu weddings include none of the rituals I associated with bridesmaids—no wedding shower, bachelorette party, or ceremonial walk down the aisle. I said yes without knowing what to expect, and soon learned that Geeta expected me to be her celebrity assistant, responsible for her outfits, makeup, and food. I was also to protect her from “negative experiences” during the wedding period and be at her side through as much as possible of her final months of singlehood.

  She seemed to think it perfectly reasonable to ask me to come to Patiala a full three months before the wedding. I tried not to snort at the suggestion—my editors wouldn’t grant me three months off for my own wedding—the most I could give her was two weeks. Geeta wrinkled her nose in disappointment. Her relatives would be arriving in Patiala weeks before the events began; no one loves to celebrate more than the Punjabis, Geeta reminded me, and there’s no better excuse for a family reunion than a wedding, so she didn’t understand my reluctance.

  By my own standards, two weeks seemed a lot of time to dedicate to a friend’s wedding, and Parvati agreed. She cackled that after being assistant to the bride, surrounded by Geeta’s family in “Punjabi Wedding World,” I’d probably be ready to flee India altogether.

  “Sometimes you feringhees act as though India is a religion that you have to convert to,” she said. “You don’t have to prove yourself, you know; you could just go to the wedding for a few days.”

  Sometimes Parvati was too smart and blunt for my liking. She was right, of course; I did walk around India trying to demonstrate my open-mindedness, as though this would compensate for my great-aunt’s four decades of missionary zeal and a century of British colonialism.

  Parvati also pointed out a more practical problem: I did not have two weeks’ worth of wedding wear in my wardrobe. I owned none of the mandatory silk saris or sequined salwar kameez outfits. Even once I borrowed elegant saris from Parvati and glitzy Punjabi outfits from Geeta, I still lacked jeweled heels and extravagant gold necklaces, and was sure to be the most underdressed person there.

  Nothing matters more than the outward appearance of wealth at an Indian wedding. In Radha’s community, the effect was achieved by soliciting cash from everyone in the neighborhood; in Geeta’s community, the relatives showed up with unsolicited envelopes of rupees to slide into Nitin Shourie’s palm. He’d pass the envelopes to his wife and fold his hands in gratitude.

  He always accepted the offerings. Geeta’s wedding was by far the biggest financial undertaking of his life. It didn’t matter that his daughter was marrying a stranger; Nitin was determined to create the lavish Punjabi festival he’d envisioned for thirty-one years. There would be legions of uniformed boys doling out quivering curries from massive black urns; freshly baked naan straight out of the blazing tandoori oven; rich desserts that would be the talk of Patiala. Nitin wanted a troupe of Punjabi folk singers in multicolored turbans sitting cross-legged on the cool February grass, their love songs bringing tears to the eyes of the gold-bedecked relatives. When the aunties decreed that Geeta’s was the best wedding in family history, Nitin imagined himself smiling humbly. He knew he couldn’t possibly achieve all this on a retired bureaucrat’s pension. He’d take whatever cash he could get.

  Rajiv’s jeans-clad leg was pulsing to the Bollywood beats of Red FM as I climbed in beside him on the passenger seat. He was one of Geeta’s college friends, and she’d arranged for him to drive me on the five-hour trip north to Patiala.

  “Are you ready for pure Punjabi wedding fun, Mirindaah? Are you ready for the times of your lives?!”

  For a moment, I wished I’d taken the train.

  Until he’d heard the news that Geeta had found a boy, Rajiv thought he’d already attended the last of his friends’ weddings. Everyone else he knew had been arranged into matches several years ago; he and his friends had pretty much given up on Geeta. As pleased as Rajiv was about the unexpected opportunity for a reunion, though, he was perplexed by her choice of a match. He found it almost humorous that Geeta would wait this long and then marry a South Indian; surely she’d had plenty of time to find herself a Punjabi boy, and surely that was her preference. I wondered how much Rajiv knew about Mohan. They’d all been friends in college, so I assumed he’d heard about Geeta rejecting Mohan’s marriage proposal. I decided that Mohan must not have tried to convince Rajiv that he and Geeta had been “involved,” because that would have cleared up the mystery for him.

  Rajiv dedicated much of the ride to pondering how the marriage would work—“They are eating such different foods, having such different customs!”—and, more immediately, to how the boy’s family would accommodate themselves to a Punjabi wedding. As he put it, “Weddings in South India are pure puja. In Punjab, we do ten percent prayer and the rest, pure fun! The boy’s family is sure to be having a shock.”

  I asked whether Geeta’s family planned to include some South Indian rituals in the ceremony, and his answer sounded like a warning.

  “She’s going to have to do things their way for the rest of her life. This is her last chance to be fully Punjabi, and the one chance for the rest of us to show those Bangaloreans how a wedding is really done. I hope they’re ready.”

  The irrigated agricultural plains of the Punjab are known as India’s wheat belt. When the partition of India divided the state into two parts, Patiala filled with refugees from the Pakistani side. They were Hindu farmers and merchants accustomed to prospering, and as they reestablished their businesses on the Indian side of the border, Patiala began to thrive again. In spite of its relative wealth, though, it feels as depressing as most North Indian towns—dusty streets lined with open-air vegetable markets and the aluminum siding of storefronts. Ramshackle bustees have metastasized across entire stretches of the town, encroaching on the territory of the grand palace of the Patiala monarchs, which once dominated the city. The slums are filled with migrant laborers from poorer parts of India; they cook over open fires and sleep under plastic tarps, just as did the refugees fleeing religious violence sixty years ago.

  It was evening when we reached Patiala, and in the air I
could feel the shiver of the Himalayan foothills. We passed a delivery boy on his bicycle, a wool scarf wrapped around his hair and looped under his chin like an antiquated head bandage; a Sikh policeman we saw had tied his scarf in the same way over the top of his turban. Geeta met us outside her parents’ compound, wearing a heavy cardigan over her salwar kameez—another awkward Indian fashion solution for the short winters.

  The Shouries’ gray concrete apartment block was decorated with strands of white fairy lights and jasmine flowers to announce that there was a wedding in the family. Inside, aunties were flitting about refilling platters with silver-wrapped sweets. Some lanky teenage cousins were watching a cricket game on TV. We said our introductory Namastes, and Geeta took me to the room we’d be sharing for the next two weeks. I knew she wanted her bridal assistant close by, but when she pointed to her childhood bed and said the two of us would be sleeping in it with her college friend Anku, I was taken aback at how close our quarters were to be.

  Geeta was an only child, but she’d rarely been alone growing up—there were always cousins and neighbors around. She’d never understood how I could rattle around in my huge Delhi apartment with only Priya and a couple of part-time maids for company. In spite of her middle-class upbringing, Geeta had the same attitude Radha did to my Nizamuddin palace: I could squeeze many more people into its rooms, and if I did, I would be happier, because I wouldn’t ever have to eat alone. On the eve of bidding farewell to her youth, the last thing she wanted was to sleep in a bed by herself.

  I tried to form a smile so Geeta wouldn’t see my dismay. In my own childhood, I’d rarely shared a room, let alone a bed; like other firstborn brats, I’d fiercely protected my space from the intrusions of my pesky sisters. My parents had made it a priority to stretch my father’s academic salary to cover the mortgage on a three-bedroom house. Because my sisters, identical twins several years younger than me, had a bond I couldn’t share, I’d decided that if I chose to stick to myself, I’d feel less left out. I played tricks on them and recorded their girlie jabber into my tape player from the closet so I could giggle about it later. When I got older, I slammed my door shut and blasted my music.

  Moving to India had only exaggerated this defiant independence. I’d managed to wall myself off in Delhi. In my determination to transform myself into Super Reporter Girl, I’d practically forgotten the pleasures of familiarity and relaxation. Few people other than Benjamin had entered my emotional space, and now he was gone. I was often lonely in India, if rarely alone. There was, of course, the constant background presence of maids, translators, and drivers. Priya was always around—she shared my apartment for a couple of years—and Geeta stopped by several times a week, for meals or just to hang out. My Delhi life also included an oft-changing cast of expat friends: They held dinners and accompanied me to parties.

  But none of those friendships—not even those with Geeta and Parvati—replicated the deep emotional bonds I’d had with friends in my twenties, when I’d been more open to the world. Living in Delhi, I’d somehow shut myself off to real intimacy without realizing I’d done so.

  Visits with my family were a stark reminder of the effects of all this. In the last few years, I’d started to feel more separate from my parents and sisters than ever before—I hadn’t lived in the same country as they in a decade, after all. I made sure to bring work back with me to my parents’ house to shield myself from undiluted family time. My default position was to treat our visits as a competitive performance; to demonstrate how amazing my India adventure was, how well my career was going, how happy I was. It took me days to get over it and remember how to be myself and goof around with my sisters.

  Geeta wasn’t concerned about impressing her relatives, from what I could see. Their affection and ease with one another made me unexpectedly envious. In Nizamuddin, Geeta had learned to accommodate what she considered my American obsession with alone time; she didn’t always call before stopping by, but she wasn’t surprised or insulted if I told her I was working when she rang the bell. And yet, in spite of my crankiness, she’d brought me into the center of the most important event of her life. Seeing her among her family in Patiala made me realize how far I’d retreated. I took a deep breath and told myself that I should consider the next couple of weeks a much-needed lesson in intimacy.

  Oblivious to the soul-searching she’d inspired, Geeta pulled me onto her bed and dumped out a dazzling pile of wedding finery—necklaces, bracelets, and earrings, all in a tangle of antique yellow gold. Geeta said every family she knew had a stash of heirlooms like this in a safe-deposit box somewhere. Indians have long been reluctant to expose their wealth to the state because of high inflation and income tax rates. Instead, they hide it from the tax man by buying wedding finery; an estimated 30 percent of India’s economy is locked away in gold. It’s a risk-free form of social security the whole family can enjoy.

  Geeta experimented with her bridal look—an exotic hairline decoration called a maang teeka and a nose ring of heavily filigreed gold. She looked like a painting of a Rajput maharani from the era of real Indian princesses; she also looked uncomfortable.

  “How much of this stuff are you supposed to wear?”

  “As much as I can manage! This is my only chance to show off the family valuables. After my wedding, it will get locked away again until the next one.”

  In spite of her mother’s strong opinion that she garb herself in the wedding gold, Geeta hadn’t decided how much to wear. It had actually inspired another modern-versus-traditional identity crisis.

  Ramesh had strong feelings about Geeta’s bridal costume, as about many aspects of her appearance, and he’d made it clear that piling it on was not his preferred aesthetic. In the hope of inspiring her to adopt a more American look, he’d bought her a single-strand white gold necklace. Geeta pulled it out of a velvet-lined box on her dresser. It didn’t look anything like Indian bridal wear—the design was too simple and it wasn’t made of the typical yellow gold. I could tell Geeta was torn. She liked the idea of paring down the bridal look in theory, but she’d anticipated being adorned like a princess bride since she was a little girl. Her childhood fantasy didn’t parse well with Ramesh, who liked to joke that families smothered their daughters in gold to make sure they couldn’t lift their heads during the ceremony.

  The marriage-age girl’s manual decrees that Indian brides should not appear to enjoy themselves. Since virginal shyness and modesty are their most highly valued attributes, there is a long list of taboo activities, including smiling, dancing, and lifting their eyes to look at the groom. If this was changing, it was happening only very slowly. Ramesh, who was obsessed with making theirs a somewhat modern wedding, had been asking around for examples of weddings at which the bride had danced. He kept coming up empty-handed. He knew Geeta’s parents were planning a conventional affair and that his own family would be scandalized by anything else, but he had his American college buddies in mind. He wasn’t even sure any of them would come, but he couldn’t stand to think of them traveling thousands of miles for an event that would cement their stereotypes about third-world people with backward practices such as arranged marriages.

  Geeta found it exhausting to maneuver between Ramesh’s forceful commitment to a globalized appearance and her parents’ time-honored expectations. Just as with her love-versus-arranged marriage conundrum, she couldn’t decide what she wanted herself; and as she had with that decision, she eventually gave in to Ramesh’s will. She sat down with her parents and explained that her NRI groom wanted his bride to smile and dance at the wedding, and asked their permission to invite the groom’s family to the early wedding events, which are typically restricted to the girl’s side. The superstition that the couple isn’t supposed to set eyes on each other in the days before the event—which is alive and well in the United States as well as India—has its origins in arranged marriage. It was considered safer for the groom to meet his bride for the first time after the deed was done, perhaps
to prevent him from taking a look at her and bolting.

  “You should have heard my mother, Miranda. It was so funny.” Geeta mimicked Pooja’s urgent, high-toned Hindi: “If the bride doesn’t maintain her propriety, everyone will talk. They’ll all say, ‘That girl waited so long to be married, she can’t stop grinning!’ They’ll call you the old bride who grinned and danced like a monkey at her wedding. Everyone knows it, betee, a bride should keep her teeth behind her lips.”

  Geeta was prone in a lounge chair. Her salwar legs were hiked up, exposing her bare calves and knees, so the henna artists could paint them with semipermanent tattoos. It was humiliating to lie this way in the vicinity of her father-in-law-to-be, but Geeta had reconciled herself to it. It was simply the price she had to pay to be a modern bride. Typically, the only guests at this public beautification ritual, the mehndi party, are women from the bride’s family; that the guest list had been opened up to men from both families was Geeta’s own doing. They were careful to keep their distance from the outstretched bride, though, instead forming a clot around the bar, jostling elbows as they ordered glasses of Royal Challenge.

  Their wives formed an expectant throng around the bride, waiting for the henna artists to take a break from Geeta’s skin and turn to painting designs on their fleshy palms. Punjabi women consider the mehndi party one of the best perks of attending a wedding; almost every Indian woman I know loves having her hands hennaed. To pass the time while they awaited their turn, the aunties lobbed advice at Geeta. The bride should get her husband’s name written inside one of the henna designs, one suggested. It was an age-old strategy to break the ice in the bedroom, she said: Later, alone with her husband on her wedding night, she could titillate him by telling him to look for his name on her body.

  Another auntie, another scrap of wisdom: Brides whose mehndi designs come out dark on their skin will love their husbands the most. Geeta, who thought she needed all the help she could get in that department, declared that she would leave the henna on her arms and legs overnight, rather than just for a few hours that evening. The dye would seep into her skin and become physical evidence that there was some love in her alliance. The aunties nodded approvingly at her dedication.