Jasmines and bhangra: A diaspora wedding diary

What goes into a cross-cultural Indian wedding hosted abroad? S R Ramakrishna flew to Fremont , USA, to attend one, and brought back this account of all the buzz

When Baldeep took the wheel of the 12-seater Ford the family had hired for a road trip to Bend, a ski destination in Oregon state, he began playing songs from his Punjabi playlist. One of his favourites, we soon discovered, was ‘Brown munde.’ He was the only Punjabi in the van, the rest of us being Kannadigas.

The family responded with disbelief when they heard A P Dhillon singing the chorus: ‘Brown munde.’ Braawn munde, as he stylised it in auto tune. Turns out ‘munde’ means ‘boys’ in Punjabi. In Kannada, it is a nasty slur. The shock soon gave way to amusement, and the embarrassed giggles turned to howls of laughter each time the chorus came up on the stereo. As the freeway opened up, and Baldeep expertly navigated the hillscape away from Fremont, the family was already singing along. They were hooked, and would ask for it all through our two-month visit to the US. ‘Brown munde’ had become a family anthem. A week before we returned to Bengaluru, the younger, more musically inclined members of the family got together, and using a karaoke mic, recorded a swing jazz version of ‘Brown munde’. They then shot a whacky video, and posted it on Instagram. Jolted a bit initially, the family had taken a liking to A P Dhillon, just as it had to gentle Baldeep.

The reason for our trip to the US was a wedding. My niece Neha, working with the Portland civic administration, was marrying her former classmate Baldeep. They had given us enough notice — more than a year, in fact — but with ever-changing pandemic restrictions, we had no idea whether we would make it at all. Eventually, five of us from Bengaluru did, and took part in a colourful Punjabi-Kannadiga wedding. Was it big fat? Not by Bengaluru standards. But out there, 250 guests is big and fat enough.

Punjabis began migrating to California in the early part of the 20th century. They were mainly farmers. They also got into trucking, and are now represented across diverse fields. For many Kannadigas, especially doctors, engineers, and techies, the US has always been a dream destination.

Partying and dancing play a big role in Punjabi weddings, and the DJs make sure to get everyone grooving. The live drummer at the reception was fantastic, and it was hard, even for the more conservative south Indians with no experience in dancing, not to join in.

Sari haul from Kanchi

The action for this side of the family began with a sari-shopping trip to Kanchipuram, a six-hour drive from Bengaluru, two months before the wedding. Bengalureans flock to this town in Tamil Nadu for their wedding finery. Its ancient Kamakshi temple, sensitively restored, attracts the devout. Arundhati, the younger of my two sisters, had enthusiastically taken up the responsibility of choosing saris: she had prior experience shopping for a few weddings. The shopping trip lasted three days.

With hundreds of shops, big and small, Kanchi is a feast of colours. “How can you sit through it all?” is a question men are asked when the women of the family go shopping. The joys of sari shopping are under-rated. It is no less an experience than visiting an art gallery. The colours and patterns can keep you absorbed for hours. You need some expertise to pick good saris, and experience to tell real silk from imitation. With computers being used for designing, motifs are often distorted by disproportionate scaling. What must have started out as a pretty peacock looks like an obese duck. Mangoes look like they were squished inside a box. After three days of listening to shopkeepers speak a charmingly accented Kannada, we hired a cab back to Bengaluru. We had collected a big haul for the family and for gifting.

One of the biggest anxieties of a wedding party flying overseas is to ensure that nothing is left behind. It helped that we were not all travelling together. Among the last-minute purchases was a little bottle of sandalwood oil from the Cauvery emporium — to be used for the fragrant water guests dab on their cheeks as they enter the wedding hall. And ordered specially from a bangle store were strings of plastic jasmine flowers that looked uncannily like the real thing. A must at weddings here, jasmines are hard to come by out there.

Gurdwara on the hill

The gurdwara in San Jose, said to be one of the largest outside India, looms majestically on an elevated hillscape, and it took us an hour’s drive to get there, after a photo shoot at the foothills of Coyote Hills regional park. To a Bengalurean eye, used to the city’s naturescapes disappearing under the onslaught of real estate, the American passion for conservation and clean air is impressive. Much is written about how their pristine natural wealth comes at a cost, with poor countries bearing the brunt of environmental degradation. Some of the cities we visited had unspoilt hills, valleys and streams within walking distance of their neighbourhoods.

At the entrance of the gurdwara, we gathered for ‘milni,’ a ritual in which prominent members of the bride’s family and groom’s family exchange garlands. I had to wear a suit to qualify, and I did. It was my first, and it was slick and black. In the huge hall, the men and women are seated separately, and the bride and groom arrive last. Makhan Bains, a Punjabi family friend who runs the restaurant Raja Sweets, helped this side of the family negotiate the Sikh rituals. The entire Bains family played a big role in the proceedings.

The Sikhs perform a ritual in which the couple circumambulate the Holy Book. The couple had spoken to the gurdwara committee, and asked that they be allowed to walk beside each other, and not girl behind boy. But at the crucial moment, the priests insisted convention be followed, and the girl trail the boy. Within minutes the couple’s friends had zeroed in on another hall, and were planning an alternative ceremony. But tempers cooled down, and the ritual went off smoothly. A highlight was the gurbani singing, with a traditional bowed instrument for accompaniment.

In recent years, weddings at the gurdwara have been largely multicultural, and sometimes multi-racial. Children of Indian-origin parents, growing up in America, are acutely aware of gender, race and caste politics, and are not afraid to speak out. Our long late-night fireplace chats showed how sharply equipped they were intellectually, though you could say they spoke more from their reading than experience. An earlier generation, on the other hand, came across as affectionate, generous and somewhat oblivious to political theory. Shaped by middle-class south Indian circumstances, they sometimes find it difficult to grasp what causes the children are espousing, and why they are putting their elders in the dock. At one point, my sister Aparna told her youngest daughter Kavya, “Don’t speak like a therapist!”

The bride’s mother Aparna had found a Tamil caterer and the breakfast and lunch at the gurdwara was south Indian. The Punjabis loved the food, but we fell short of vadas during breakfast. The hosts had factored in one or two per head, but the vadas were a bigger hit than expected!

For the evening party, Neha had ordered a bridal outfit from a Bengaluru store after days of online browsing and chatting. It didn’t fit, adding to the last minute confusion. The tailor had goofed up, and she had to rush and pick up something in Fremont. The Bengaluru store, thankfully, refunded the money. The warm gatherings included, besides the couple’s friends, people my sister and brother-in-law Mani had interacted with over the decades.

Faith in Fremont

Fremont feels a bit like ‘70s Jayanagar, with flowering gardens between houses, wide open playgrounds, and neat roads with just an occasional car passing by. In that decade, old-timers of Bengaluru might remember, HAL was frequently testing its fighter planes. Silicon Valley is not too far from Fremont, and many of the uber rich fly to work. A report puts the number of private jets in California at about 21,000, the highest for any state in the US. The sound of small engines punctuates the silence, and the sky is a rangoli of smoke plumes. Two other aspects of American life that Bengalureans of an older generation can relate to are their passion for vinyl records and coffee. The region boasts huge record stores such as Amoeba, and they are thriving. The Americans are willing to spend good money on records when the same songs are available digitally on Spotify and Apple Music almost for free. Bengaluru has lost all its music stores.

A bit of India is apparent in many aspects of life on the West Coast. The cinema halls routinely run Indian films, Hindi and south Indian. In Livermore, an hour’s drive away, a Hindu temple caters to all denominations. We also saw an Ashtalakshmi temple in Niles, a little town that cherishes its association with Charlie Chaplin. A silent film museum here is looking for volunteers to keep it open. His car is on display on the main street, and several stores selling antiques are an added attraction. The Telugus are setting up shrines for their favourite deities across the country. The priest who came home a couple of days ahead of the wedding spoke three south Indian languages. We also heard of an Umashankar Dikshit from Karnataka who pilots his own aircraft to perform his priestly duties at diaspora homes across the state.

After three parties and two ceremonies, the couple were still not officially married. In Portland, it turns out, anyone can solemnise a marriage. In his lunch break, Omar, one of their closest friends, paid a fee of 50 dollars and received a certificate from a church ordaining him. At the park, he read out a simple line or two, and Neha and Baldeep were formally married. They cut a cake and popped champagne bottles.