The Wedding Chronicles Part Two

You guys know how much I dislike dancing, right? Oh, not drunken dancing, not the under my umber-ella, ella, ella, ay, ay, ay gyrating when you curve your arms at the elbow and stick them up and move only the lower part of your body, feeling confident and sexy and knowing that amidst the strobe lights and the smoke and the noise, no one is watching you move except for who you really want to watch you. And it is for them you dance, your hips moving, your mouth singing along, your entire body just saying see, this is what it could be like if you and me got together. That's not the kind of dancing I'm referring to. Drunken dancing, like drunken sex, has a certain loss of inhibition, whereas when you're sober, you're acutely aware of all the awkward right angles your body is making.

I got slightly coerced into dancing for this wedding. The songs are fun, in a nightclub, I'd be grinding with the best of them, but in the afternoon, when your moves are choreographed, it's fear inducing. It doesn't help that two of the dancers are pros and the one we practiced with demonstrated the steps with such ease and with a smile on her face that it looked super easy, until I tried it. I just can't get my legs and my arms to move at the same time, and I'm totally directionally dyslexic so lefts and rights are a problem for me. (Seriously, when I'm giving an auto directions I have to pause before I say left or right just to figure out what hand I write with.) Punjabi weddings are all about the dancing. Not so much in the South, at least, neither of the communities I belong to, and even the one Gujarati wedding I went for didn't have much dancing, but Punjabi weddings would be incomplete if there wasn't a shava, shava thing happening. (What IS the meaning of shava anyway?) Last night was the shagun, which I will helpfully Google and give you a link for, so you're not as confused as I was when I got into the neighbourhood and found instead of the quiet house party I had imagined, a tent, with singers. (Okay, here we go). And there was dancing, more specifically, that song, you know the one where the singers call on different members of the family to do a little jig? I was skulking in a corner, smoking my cigarette and hoping no one would notice me, but no, when the 'friends of the bride' portion came on, I was dragged out there, where I smiled weakly, did my thing and went away as fast as I could towards my Old Monk, only to be pulled back for 'sisters-in-law of the groom'. Then Bani, Maya and I totally got into the spirit of things and when Leela and Ishan finally got their section of the song, we crashed it, but we were shoved away unceremoniously. Hmph. Make up your MIND, I either dance or I don't.

Okay, this is the reallllllllllllllly girly section of this post, so don't say I didn't warn you. Can I talk about my outfits? I really love them, I do, I do. My grandmother and aunt turned up yesterday with all my new clothes, and I have been making loving noises over them. Last night I was wearing my aunt's 36-year-old purple sari, very transparent, in fact so transparent, I wondered why this outfit was considered more "modest" than my jeans and t-shirts. With it, they got me this lovely purple brocade blouse (more like the top half of the blouse, clearly, my family wants me to get some) with beads embroidered on it. Then there's this black and copper salwar kameez that I'm wearing to the mehendi, another naked ghagra choli in white and red for the sangeet and finally, for the wedding, a beautiful pale pink sari with silver embroidery. I'm done being a chick now, so you can continue reading.


Besides wedding stuff, it's been a pretty busy week for me. I met with the Saminder for drinks at Flames.... (minus the apostrophe, plus the ellipses), where we discussed parenting, for some strange reason (it's wedding season, I'm all teary and feeling my biological clock tick tock warningly), I met with Rohini and Fortunata from the old office at The Big Chill (yay! Penne with bacon!) and then a bunch of people later at good ol' 4S. Ah, Delhi. It's so good to be back and this AWESOME weather, slightly nippy, smell of woodsmoke in the air, god, why do I ever leave?