Headline October 09, 2018/ '' 'BRIDES ALL BEAMS ' ''

'' 'BRIDES ALL BEAMS ' ''

ON A TUESDAY in December, from the dark corridors of the Delhi subway, we climbed the staircase of the Chawri Bazar station single file, me last-

Since I had no idea where we were going. We emerged on the fringes of a traffic circle, into a thick, hazy smog that clung to our skin and throat and nostrils and which formed a film that, for the next three weeks, would never really go away.

Around us, on a chaotic street that used to anchor a 19th-century hardware bazaar, a million negotiations were taking place. My soon to be father-in-law, a New Delhi native and the Megallan of the city, brokered a deal of his own.

He hailed two rickshaws - the three-wheel kind powered by people, not motors - told each where to go, the price he would pay and motioned for his son and me to  hoist ourselves  into one, while he and my future mother-in-law climbed into the other.

The seats faced backwards, offering an uninterrupted view of old Delhi's traffic-thronged streets, crumbling facades and canopy of power lines.

''How is this legal?'' I asked, staring up a lethal looking knot of electrical wires, not really expecting an answer.

The driver started pedaling. I clutched the bar on front of me like a child on a roller coaster. We hit a bump on the road; I screamed.

Some brides shop for their weddings while holding flutes of champagne. I could barely hold my phone long enough to take a selfie.

Indian weddings bring to mind glittering gold jewels and swingy skirts studded with rhinestories and tiny mirrors. But my future husband and I would be marrying in California's wine country and sought a different aesthetic :

A celebration to reflect our distinctly American way of life while nodding to our heritage. Both sets of our parents emigrated from India to the United States before we were born, mine from south India, his from the north.

Growing up I visited India with my parents every three or four years; he went back yearly without fail, always to Delhi, where his 97 -year- old grandfather, an archaeologist still lives.

Shopping for our wedding in both Delhis, New and Old, would root us back to our cultural homeland, this cacophonous of silk hawkers and honking horns and a deal around every corner, where heavy velvet lehengas from shop windows like so many skinned chickens.
 
It's like an airport bookstore versus Amazon. [Thanks to the Internet, I lusted after a devastatingly elegantly gown of embroidered roses by the designer Sabyasachi Mukhergee; to try it on, I would have to visit one of his India boutiques].

I knew from experience. I had been married before and had purchased a gorgeous, peacock feather-festooned lehenga, the two-piece bridal gown native to north India, online.

But I had failed to diet or exercise enough to be comfortable showing a six-inch swath of my midriff, as the outfit did, and six weeks before my wedding in New York, panicked a brought a less revealing lehenga from a store in Jackson Heights. Queens. the photos make me cringe.

There were other reasons to return to India : my fiance's aforementioned grandfather, along with many relatives that we rarely see. My future in-laws, whom I referred with to with the reverential  Auntie and Uncle, go back every December.

If we went with them, I'd have an opportunity to bond with the tight knit family I was marrying into befor I walked  down the aisle again, something I knew was more important  than the “wow” factor of the centerpieces.

The memories banked during the trip could carry us through Thanksgivings and Christmases to come.

The Honor and Serving of this beautiful publishing continues. The World Students Society thanks writer Sheila Marikar and wish her the very best.

With respectful and very loving dedication to all the girls/female students the world over. See Ya all ''register'' on : wssciw.blogspot.com - The World Students Society and Twitter -!E-WOW! - the Ecosystem 2011.

'''Wedding Adventures'''

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless