Last weekend I was off at the Great North Indian Wedding of a close friend, in Jaipur. I would be the only friend there, and being socially-handicapped was nervous about entertaining myself alone, but a last-minute phone call from a common friend, "It's a North Indian wedding Mangs, they'll all be dancing and singing, it'll be so much fun!" finally did the trick and I trundled off on the five-hour ride.
It was fun.
There was much dancing and singing.
I got off the bus, was whisked away by Tall Cousin straight to the night-before-wedding-thingummy where the whole girl's family rolled about in hysterical laughter while her sisters enacted the Meeting.
This is a wedding that has been cemented through one meeting, yes just one, and several phone calls, so many jokes about her dad's loan to pay the ISD bills were thrown around, songs were rehashed and dances conjured up to trace their brief, but not unusual, relationship.
I also learnt about the high value of the compliment "sweet". Rather different from the slang... or is it really?
"Itni sweet si lag rahi hain" ("looking so sweet") also translates into a potential marriage prospect and having firmly turned those down, I discovered that to be considered "sweet" doesn't entail any good behaviour. It's all about a long-distance glance by a Babloo aunty or a Seema chachi. They don't care that the sweet-si ladki was actually staggering around (alone) with a wine glass in her hand, drinking alone (God forbid!), getting increasingly wasted (still alone!)and then eating way too much than was good for her (again, a----)before rocking away to a distant dark corner to snooze after the Sunday brunch.
Thank goodness for long sight and first-impression judgements. I kept the Gupta name high.
