And then it rained

Written to an OSC prompt from last year; posted on the eve of a monsoon wedding's fourth anniversary.

I had never quite dreamt about my wedding day until I had to plan it. All I had ever really thought of was the weather: it had to be pleasant, preferably outdoors and during the day... which effectively meant that narrow window of 2-3 weeks every year in Delhi.

Pranshu and I had hinted to our parents that koi mil gaya (cue KKHH audio. For non-Hindi speakers: we had found the person we wanted to marry). We then quickly left for master’s degrees one after the other in the UK. This bought us at least a couple of years, you know, more time to feel ready.

Once he had formally completed his degree from India, in lockdown, his parents started to ask (as did mine): when were we going to lock this deal down? Pranshu and I had originally hoped to live and work in the UK for a few years. We found ourselves in India during the pandemic with changed, uncertain plans. So we gave our parents the go ahead.

Both sets of parents had been surprisingly easy to convince, despite several cultural differences - oh boy, those would unfold later… Rather, there was no convincing to be done and minimal questioning that was met with agreeable answers. They were ready to take this forward. The rishta became pakka in August 2020 with optimism that the pandemic would die down soon. We planned for a small engagement ceremony - which couldn’t be called an engagement to avoid offending either culture - in December 2020. The plan was to fix a wedding date and venue by then.

In hindsight, I should have known it had all been too smooth and easy.

Appa and Amma were raised as Tamil Brahmins. While they were never overly religious, ritualistic or superstitious, time has always been sacred. Rather, auspicious timing is sacred. This meant a more Brahmin-er Brahmin had to be engaged in complex mathematics (yay!) to find the right time and date, customised to this specific bride and groom - barring Saturdays because those are inauspicious for weddings. Their only other ask was to pick a month with the best possible probability (yay stats!) for my family - at the very least my brother, sister-in-law and nephew - to attend given border closures. This meant at least March 2021 or later. My extended family is split between the US and in parts of India you would need to take an aircraft from.

Pranshu’s parents were raised as Arya Samaji and claimed they didn’t care about auspicious dates or times. All that mattered to them was that the 2-day wedding celebrations be held on a weekend: Friday/Saturday or Saturday/Sunday. They wanted to host it in a month that had good weather (Feb/March). Much of Pranshu’s extended family lives within driving distance of Delhi.

Between September 2020 and January 2021, we considered 17 wedding date options sourced from two different priests (whose date options rarely coincided). I actually went back to the WhatsApp messages to count and verify.

Notes from venue hunting

In November 2020, I slid into a depressed phase. My therapist was suffering from long COVID and I was struggling to cope in her absence. I was also working two jobs - one with an Indian research organisation and another with the WHO to document pandemic response in 20 countries. As a result, I was overworked, under slept and terribly anxious and stressed. My parents too appeared to be feeling low. Everything had been easier when they had to plan my brother’s wedding. Not just because of cultural similarities but also sheer physical presence of people which was near impossible at this time. Pranshu’s parents wanted a March wedding and weren’t keen on extending it further to summer months. We felt forced to imagine a wedding without my closest family members, without most of my extended family. Is that even a wedding?

These conversations were complicated. After all, the two families didn’t know each other well but were on the cusp of forming “life-long” relationships. It often felt like we were speaking different languages. My parents constantly brought up border restrictions, visa implications and infection-control as key variables to consider delaying the timeline. His parents responded with how most of their guests would be able to drive up to Delhi.

During one of those meetings, I stayed back home. There was a breakthrough. My parents managed to communicate how difficult “picking” a date had been for us, regardless of auspiciousness. All of us decided to revisit this conversation after the non-engagement engagement ceremony. Pranshu’s father did reveal his preferred outer deadline: we had to be married before Pranshu turned 30 (on July 4, 2021).

On the other hand, my parents were beginning to reach their wit’s end with our priest. It didn’t help that I was throwing tantrums saying I would rather not get married altogether. I had also tried to ask Pranshu if we could get married in court instead. This launched him to legal pros and cons which became too boring a conversation for us. At some point, Amma asked our priest if we could go ahead with any date and just do a pooja to remedy this.

What was the point of being an old religion if you didn’t develop loopholes along the way? Thankfully, our priest agreed and my parents were content with this solution.

In January 2021, we finally came close to booking a venue for a mid-April date that fell on a weekend. SUCCESS! Almost.

Pranshu’s mother realised that this would coincide with Navratri and most of her extended family would be fasting - how could we celebrate with a wedding feast? We were all sitting at the venue. Pranshu took charge and asked to see the calendar of bookings. After consulting with the parents (and no priests), we agreed on May 14. It was supposed to be Eid + Akshaya Tritiya but most importantly a court holiday (Pranshu and his father are lawyers). It was also a Friday (okay with my parents, close enough to a weekend with that holiday). It was also far enough for my family to have a chance at attending. We began planning in earnest for the “hottest” event of the summer.

This was too good to be true! And it was.

As we all know, the devastating second wave made its way through April and May 2021. Appa tested positive after his second vaccine dose. Pranshu and his family too came down with covid. Mercifully everyone recovered. On May 14, I went to get my vaccine instead of getting married, armed with a face shield, mask and sanitizer.

In April and May, weddings were allowed to either happen in court (i.e. the district magistrate’s offices) or at home, with seven people - including the priest. As we began emerging out of those dark months, rumor had it that the authorities might allow fifty people weddings from July. Which month would be better? What was worth the risk? Would everybody be safe? Would it be better to host it at home with just the parents? Should we go outside of Delhi? Pranshu and I fought so much that during one (dramatic) phone call, it came to: “maybe it’s best we don’t get married at all.”

Our venue insisted on charging the same amount for fifty guests as they did for two hundred (originally planned). This meant we needed to search for dates and venues again. It was bizarre. We began considering venues that had never been on our radar. In some instances, we would reach venues to see other people walking in with bags of cash and booking them before we even had a chance to look around.

We finally consulted a singular priest.

18 July, Sunday…

…which just happened to be available at a very fancy hotel. Once the official government guidelines came through, we had two weeks to get everything in order. I ordered my jewelry from an Instagram store. Through Amazon, I ordered way too many last minute impulse purchases backed with the solid logic of “what if?”. My friends help host a fun, memorable mehendi at home which included virtual performances by my brother, sister-in-law, nephew, and cousin sister (whose birthday is 18 July).

My final wedding guests included 5 close friends, 4 neighbours, 3 cousins, an aunt and uncle, my sister-in-law’s parents and her cousins.

It was beautiful despite being completely not according to any plan or dream. It was a cloudy Sunday, indoors. We blended and highlighted both cultures. We had hundreds of attendees on Zoom from across the country and the world. Many of them dressed up and shared their selfies. Some even ordered in food!

Zoom broadcasts on laptop and TV, a “wedding feast”, Bhaiya and Archita's mehendi (featuring baby shark)

We finally left for his house for my grihapravesh (when a bride enters her husband’s home). We stepped out of the car… and then it rained.

And in an inconsequential, non-fight that no one remembered and only existed in 28 year old Sharmada’s mind, I won. Pranshu was 30 years and 2 weeks old on our wedding day.

Weddings are tough to plan and host. Add cultural differences and what’s lost in translation. Now, add a global pandemic, border closures, uncertainty, fear. My therapist pointed out that I was experiencing grief of what could have been in addition to the fear and anxiety of uncertainty. So many of us tried to plan these joyous celebrations in the midst of all of that. I know of couples whose parents couldn’t make it to their weddings. Others hosted two weddings - intimate, followed by grand. On the evening of 18 July, when Pranshu and I were alone for the first time since tying the knot, we exclaimed with great joy that we would never plan a wedding again! So far, so true :)