Masala Wedding

Excerpts from the book

Punjabi weddings are simple but lively affairs and celebrated with a great deal of verve and relish. Today was like the Punjabi Mardi Gras, an occasion to beat all occasions. All over the hall there was an abundance of flowerlike sari’s, resplendent Indian suits and wonderfully colourful turbans illuminating the reception like only a true Punjabi wedding could do so. It was the marriage of the visual with the feeling of quality that set the mood sublimely.
Sharm, sweating profusely as he always did, and with body odour so bad it was enough to put a skunk in a life threatening coma then let me down from his shoulders. He stood there swaying and whistling with his fingers in his mouth. I had to escape, he was big, drunk, and more importantly exuded the freshness of a tramps underpants.

This was the day that every woman worth her salt would have penned in their diaries. The day just before the wedding which they would look forward to knowing full well the humiliation that was facing every groom in this most anticipated of traditions? A yellow, thick, gooey tumeric paste and staining cream would be applied to the groom's limbs and facial area in a bid to make him whiter for the wedding day whilst the women (in some cases the apostles of Satan), chanted and sang hymns and boliyans (songs) with delightful glee.

Elsewhere you could see married partners sharing saucy and secretive looks with one another, trying in vain to keep their murky liaisons hush hush as their unsuspecting husbands and wives grooved inches away from them. This was the burning light of reality of today’s modern society, it was just impossible to comprehend.

She was my goddess, the main artery of my life, a flowing river gushing through the previously baron plains of my existence, a true irrigational saviour and I knew I had won the lottery.

Don’t get me wrong I would rather have slept on a bed of killer rats, drank a cup of cold sick than be stuck in the cross hairs of this devil, but what could I have done? Bullies like this are motivated by fear, weakness and other such manifestations, and I had signed up to this treatment, the day I let him permeate my existence, this was my biggest faux pas.

At the time I felt on top of the world, untouchable and like a veritable god. I had just taken a heavy shot of the white stuff in the toilet at work. This was my unique, tried and trusted way of escaping the mundane and stupefying groove of life’s chores.

This was it the moment of reckoning. One Amitabh Bacchan type heroic lunge for the knife could be catastrophic. The icy critique of the morgues cold slab was enough to make the decision transparently easy as I looked down at the serrated edge of the knife that was being twirled in sinister fashion under my nose. Similarly, as I did not have a particular penchant for hospital food I relented against trying my Bruce Lee flying Kick move on him.

I mean any more hideous and she would have been wrapped around with yellow hazard tape and condemned. The pig tusks protruding through her nose gave me my first indications that she was a Frankenstein experiment gone hideously wrong.

As the aunties exchanged boli’s (or known as boliyan) two of them, both on my dad’s side, both darker skinned, dusky little numbers and each possessing a juicy throat cutting plat, swaying viciously from side to side, circled each other. They suddenly started hissing and puffing with their mouths, staring into the whites of one another’s eyes, whilst the other guests clapped faster. As the hissing and puffing got louder the two of them lunged forward in dramatic fashion to meet in the middle of the circle tilting their heads from side to side and clapping furiously as though their lives depended on having the loudest hiss and claps. The rhythm and crescendo of the gidda and boli is distinguished from the hand clapping from the performers and these two warriors were certainly in character. They maneuvered around each other in sinister fashion still clapping, still hissing loudly, increasing the tempo and speed of the circling and hissing, but also making a strange `wuuuu wuuuu, wuuuu` sound with the accompanying chorus of `wuuuu wuuuu wuuuu` coming from the circle around them as well. Even the men had gathered in the room as everyone looked on laughing and drinking from their cups. The two of them, the dusky pair, then hugged after they had finished burning each other out on the dance floor, and we all clapped showing our appreciation for their sweaty, plat swaying efforts.

`Kam saab - who is that bhanchod over there staring at me with the caterpillar eyebrows?` I looked at him incredulously, was he taking the royal piss out of me: `That’s my dad man!`