Sixteenth Day in Nepal
I got married on the 16th day.
Some may argue to differ, others may plainly dismiss my oversimplification, but from my experience I saw that wedding in the middleclass Nepal is not about joy or celebration, it’s about stress and chaos. Leading up to the wedding day, our wedding planning had been so chaotic that between my mother, my sister, and myself we must have uttered “kahile umkelaa jasto vaisakyo malaai ta” at least 50 times. Umkelaa was the keyword.
We never quite captured the mood to rejoice the occasion, we were just seeking ways to survive the schedules. The absence of professional wedding planners made everything so haphazard, that the whole act eventually played itself out to be a parody of hits and misses—mostly misses. In the end, when it was all said and done, only the jealous relatives walked away with the jovial reminiscences of some inevitable bloopers.
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I could not sleep the night before my wedding day. Doubtful and unnerved, I rolled on the bed in misery till four O’ clock in the morning. That’s when I decided to take a stroll in the darkness of pre-dawn Kathmandu. After wandering in the vacant streets of Laazimpaat, Paanipokhari, and Maharajganj for 45 minutes, I returned home more confused and less upbeat.
As I was entering my house I saw a man couple of feet away from our main gate, he was sitting in a squatting position with his both hands resting on our fence wall. I did not see his face since his back was facing me. “Who’s that?” I shouted.
“Baabu tesai attyaunu hunchha tapai,” startled, our purohit baaje immediately stood up, nervously knotting his surwaal’s string.
“Guru ji, why are you taking a piss here? You could use the bathroom inside, you’re already here.”
“There is never any water in your house,” the holy man rightfully defended his action.
Our baaje had come to prepare for the rituals that needed to be performed at the groom’s house before leaving with Janti. I took him to our family room upstairs. My mother was already awake. When she saw our baaje, she could not help notice, “Is it raining outside or what?”
“Yo ghar maa kahile paani hudaina, tala parkhaal maa pisaab ferna baseko, ee babu le saatto linu vo ni mero ta.” The old baaje replied bluntly while my mother and I inspected his completely soaked surwaal. I really did not mean to scare him that bad.
I have seen my mother laugh out that loud only three times in my entire life. “This must be a good sign guru ji. Gaai ko moot ta sagun vanchhan. Tapai aba guru jasto maanchhe, tapai ko pani sagun nai maannu paryo ni.”
That’s how my nuptial day began—through my sleepwalking in the suburbs of Kathmandu, our baaje sprinkling his trousers with the fluid secreted by his kidneys, and my usually somber mother taking the role of a standup comedian.
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I had totally lost my interest in the wedding after the engagement. One of the worst things about inter-wealth marriage is that the priorities in two families are seldom similar.
I was worried about how my wife was going to fit in to our modest living style. My bride-to-be, on the other hand, was more excited about their wedding reception than the wedding itself. Why? Because her parents had invited diplomats from almost all the embassies in Kathmandu. How could they possibly know all these diplomats? It’s their hobby I believe, befriending diplomats.
Especially after the engagement, my fiancée called me everyday to brag about those diplomats attending her reception. She would proudly say, “We’re opening the bar only for the embassy people and the VIPs.”
Is that even fair to the other invitees? Is that even something to brag about? I used to ask those questions to my commonsense after hanging up on her.
My commonsense would reply: How would you know? You don’t have a bar in your house.
I did not know who to phrase it to, but I was bugged by the more profound question: what the hell had happened to my wife-to-be?
She used to be a quite normal person in the US, but as soon as she reached Kathmandu, I don’t know what drug she started taking; she had become this completely irrational individual. I blame the women around her for detoxifying the cynicism that I had injected her with. To their glory, those women were good. In a week, they had remedied her from my five years worth of work.
I could possibly never fathom why my delirious bride was so excited about those diplomats attending her reception. These are not even good quality diplomats. Good diplomats are exported to USA, Russia, China, France, England, Egypt, or even India. The only reason Nepal has diplomats is because, occasionally, we donate animals like rhinoceros or chimpanzee to foreign countries. That’s one of the major functions of a diplomat in Nepal—to smile on camera standing next to a chimpanzee or a rhino before they are shipped abroad. “Say cheese!”
But to my bride, on my own wedding day, some Far Eastern diplomat who spoke worse English than a lisping circus monkey was more important than me. Talk about getting the feeling of changing your last name to ‘nobody’.
Later that day I met one Chinese diplomat who had waited till the arrival of Janti to tell me something personally. “I jus wanget to meet the lucky gloom,” he told me shaking my hand.
Trust me Your Excellency, I was struggling with a range of emotions that day, but that tickling sensation of being lucky was not one of them. Just out of sheer curiosity, at what point in Chinese civilization did you decide to outcast the letter ‘R’?
Maybe another reason I was not excited about my wedding was, it was not an arranged marriage. There was no excitement of knowing new people. I already knew my wife’s siblings. Until then I had a very strange relationship with them. Their upbringing was entirely different from mine, on a social scope we never bonded. For me they were just the siblings of the girl I used to watch movies with—nothing more. They used to treat me exactly the same way, divided by two. Even if we tried, we couldn’t be more indifferent to each other. … Wait a second here, maybe, now I think about it, since they went to a Convent school in India, I might have resented the fact that they pronounce ‘sh’, ‘dj’, ‘g’, and ‘z’ sounds much better than I do. Damn Vanasthali.
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The very thought of all the activities that were to take place later that day overwhelmed me. I felt strained and disoriented, and the sleepless night only made the matter worse. I urgently needed to talk to someone with sense who could defuse my episodic implosions.
“You know the girl. You know what you’re getting into. This whole thing is just a fleeting routine. What could be possibly bothering you?” Chitrika fupu asked me.
“Everything’s bothering me… the rituals, the formalities, getting to know all these people, the very thought of how she will adjust here… ”
“Your parents know she has lived away from home all her life. They have a very low expectation of her. If you’re scared that she can’t even live up to that, then you shouldn’t be worried about today, you should be worried about the rest of your life.”
“She fitting in here is only a part of my anxiety… you must have heard about their house, how filthy rich they are… I don’t know… it’s that ego thing with us men. My ego is getting the better of me.”
“Knowing you, you haven’t lied to her about your parents’ worth, I assume.”
“No. If anything, I have given her the impression that we are less than what we actually are.”
“Then why worry? If they have a big house, it’s their worry. If they have more money, it’s their headache. If they have many cars, it’s their petrol.” Chitrika fupu simplified.
“Sometimes things aren’t that black and white… No matter what I have told her, I’m sure she has some expectation of us.”
“You know my house has low ceilings, so the doors in my house are small. If you ever visit me you’ll need to stoop low to avoid bumping your head on the door. A tall person like you can only fit in my house if you make that adjustment. I can’t afford to have new ceilings for you. If you enjoy my company over your comfort, I’m sure you won’t even notice my ceilings. You’ll adjust.”
Having discerned her message, I mulled over in awe. Fearing that I might butter her up with a compliment, she cut to the chase before I could vocalize my thoughts: “On the most important day of your life, you can’t be bothered by the hypothetical. Tell me what else is bothering you?”
“This crowd here, all these people, all these opinions, all these advices, all these superstitions, these mindless traditions, everything is driving me nuts,” when I found a model listener, I began to whine brazenly.
“You’re leaving in two weeks. God only knows how many years it will be before you decide to show up again. On that plane ride back, it’s going to be just you, her, and the memories of your days here. If you choose not to enjoy this now, there’ll be no memories—just you and her, and that long ride. Don’t you want to reminisce this instead, when she starts talking about her parents’ house?” She smiled.
I really want this woman to live to be 127. In just 15 minutes she had made me feel taller by lowering her ceilings. I have seen the pictures of her house in Gyanu kaka’s album; the ceilings are not that low.
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At 11:15 AM I received an unexpected call from my future saali. “You think baba can manage a purohit within the next couple of hours?” She asked me without hailing a ‘hello’ or a ‘howdy’.
“What for?”
“For the wedding tonight.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me. What happened to your purohit?” I was puzzled but devilishly happy inside to hear that the system was breaking down on their end as well.
“We fired him.”
“How do you fire a purohit? It’s like saying I fired my doctor. You can only go to another doctor. That’s not firing.”
In the next ten minutes, she explained me in her own words and disbelief what had happened—conclusively leading me to my own disbelief and no words.
Their family purohit could not perform the rituals because his wife had passed away less than a year ago. The purohit they had hired for our engagement and Swayambar was someone referred to them by their neighbor. I remember from my engagement day, he was an odd priest. First of all he was young and sounded educated. His normal sentence included anywhere between two to three English words. However, what amused me the most about that purohit was, how quickly he had changed into a modern outfit after the formalities—as if he was embarrassed by his daura surwaal.
My saali told me that this hip purohit started calling them frequently after the engagement. No matter who answered the phone, he would always ask for my saali. “Didi le ta bidesh mai vetnu vayechha, ani tapai ko chahi ke chha ni situation, single nai ho ki, romance chha? Share garnus na eso life kaa kuraa haru.”
Three minutes after that weird purohit had uttered those words to my saali, my future mother-in-law had “fired” him. That was two hours before my saali called me that day. Since my saali is not creative enough to conceive a story like this; it remains the most bizarre anecdote of my 32 days in Nepal.
When my saali was telling me the story, I remembered my bride making a similar observation during the engagement: “Yo baahun le malaai kina twal twal heri raachha? He’s making me uncomfortable.”
When my saali finished her story I realized that I am a devilishly wicked man. I was genuinely enjoying the disorder on their side. I could hear my future saalo in the background arguing with their caterer. They seemed to be in a mess too. Even Chitrika fupu had not uplifted my morale to that extent.
There was no way our baaje was going to perform the wedding. He was in bad terms with my future in-laws’ family purohit since 1967. Our baaje tells us that their baaje had stolen a rich jajmaan from him. It’s a long story that took place at a rich Rana Ji’s house during a Saptaaha ko pooja in 1967. It is quite fascinating how much animosity and a sense of competition exist among these purohits in Kathmandu. I have seen baajes rap in Sanskrit slokas to outshine each other.
“I’ll talk to baba, but I doubt it he’ll be able to manage something this quick.” I hung up the phone in high spirits. I could not care less about their baaje problem. I was just happy that they were in disarray too. Thank you, horny purohit.
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I was in my room trying to catch a quick nap when I heard a knock on the door. Standing outside were my sister and my jethi fupu. “We need to paint you,” my sister said as if it were some daily, normal activity.
“You know what? I’m not even going to ask you why. You have your spray and brush handy?”
Because every time I asked the rationale behind any of the rituals, I ended up collecting the same custom-made comeback: “Chaar din ke bidesh basyaa chha, khai ke van thaanchha aafulaai.”
Five minutes later, I took off my shirt, and my fupu and sister anointed me by painting my body with mustard oil and turmeric. “Look at this, you seriously need to control your diet,” my sister kept on slapping my flabby back during the entire body-sanctifying routine.
Nobody in our house (there were more than 40 people in the house) knew the significance of that body painting segment, but, hey, thanks to my cooperation, we checked that off of our list.
“This is Ramesh ji, the photographer,” my brother introduced me to this short stocky man who seemed more pleasant than a politician on the eve of an election. I would not have accepted a demeanor any less cordial from a man who had charged us eighteen thousand rupees for a day’s work.
“Are you ready?” inquired Ramesh ji.
“For what?”
“I just want to take some close-ups and some profile shots.”
I hate taking my solo pictures. On my best days, I am an average looking person. All the wizardries of Photo Concern experts or one of their graduates, Ramesh ji, can not fix the inherent structures of my median exterior. When I refused, the entire family protested: “Yo ta purai kuhire vaechha, je kuraa maa pani different huna khojchha.” When I think of a typical kuhire, I think of Dick Cheney, so I gave up.
“Let’s go to the roof. It’s sunny outside.” Having seen a challenge in front of him, Ramesh ji sounded excited.
“I don’t want any profiles. I hate my nose. Just take some close-ups.”
“Leave it up to me.”
“Ramesh ji, I can’t leave my nose to you, it occupies so much space you’ll start charging me the rent.”
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When I came downstairs after posing for Ramesh ji, I counted 13 women in our small family room, collectively regretting the small size of Saaipaata that we had sent to the bride’s house.
“You should have seen the Saaipaata that Isha’s in-laws sent.” I heard one of my relatives telling the others.
“This Saaipaata thing has become a big part of the wedding. We missed an opportunity,” the other one pondered. They were not there to sympathize with us. They were just rubbing it in to us. My mood that was somewhat boosted after talking to my saali, suddenly turned sour.
I am incurably disillusioned by how formulaic our culture remains. Most of what we do is to cater other people’s expectation of us. It troubled me to recognize how quickly I too was influenced by that. In my hearts of heart, I know, for me the wedding had become all about looking good—not feeling good.
How good I wanted to look?
Until that moment, I did not have a clue what Saaipaata looked like. I never saw people working on it, neither had I seen it leaving our house. But it sure as hell affected my spirit as soon as I heard our Saaipaata was smaller. Compared to whose? Isha’s. And who is Isha? The one who received the big Saaipaata.
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By 4:30 PM, the Janti crowd had gathered in our house. I saw almost all the faces that I had seen during my engagement. We didn’t have tea or snacks ready for the Janti. That job was allocated to my father, but he had completely forgotten about it. So my brother and I improvised, offering them a cup of apology and some bites of jokes about my father. Our khaajaa became an instant hit.
At 5:05 PM, after a brief Tikaa custom, my mother dispatched me to the bride’s house with the Janti and the band.
I don’t think ‘kajra re kajra re’ is a bad song at all. But any song becomes mediocre when you hear it 17 times a day—in every taxi ride, in every wedding you attend, and in every restaurant where they sing or play music. When that was the first song the band played, I knew how banal the rest of the evening was going to be.
We reached the bride’s house at 5:45. Like the first time during engagement, everyone was staring at me as if my tail was hairy and my horns were long. I got more attention than a panda being transferred to the National Zoo in DC. And I sure felt as nervous as a male Panda, who had accidentally impregnated a female lion. For the second time in as many visits, I was the most uncomfortable person in the crowd of more than 250 people.
My wedding was a long, tedious, and often repetitive ceremony, and truth be told, I did not even enjoy a second of it.
As soon as we entered the house, the bride’s father escorted me to the mandap. I remember him grabbing my hand so hard as if he was punishing me for dating his daughter without his permission. My saali sneaked behind me and said: “You look very nervous. Loosen up!”
“How did you manage the purohits?” I whispered on my saali’s ears.
“They came from Sundarijal. One of them used to sell us milk when he used to live close by.”
As soon as I reached the mandap, the bride’s cousins gathered around me to snatch my shoes. I was not even fully conscious to fight them. I took off my shoes and handed over to one of the bride’s cousins. “It’s all yours. Let the bargain begin tomorrow morning.”
“We need to start,” one of the two purohits announced. Thus began the never-ending insane rites.
The wedding ceremony itself lasted for a combined eight hours or so. It was a painfully slow process. My legs wrapped, I had to sit in a yoga-like position during the entire procedure. Maybe, through physical tortures, those priests were trying to give me one more reason to run away from there.
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“It’s a testing tool that iteratively tests your patience and imperfections, and grades you during confrontations.”
That was my answer to my wife’s query. A week before we left for Nepal, quite giddy about the wedding, my wife had jokingly emailed me asking me to define the term ‘wife’. I was not entirely joking with my response.
One of the advantages of getting married late is, having seen the wives of your close friends and relatives of similar age; your expectation is naturally low. Among my eight close friends, the last one was married two years before me. Besides, having known the girl for five years, I knew what I was getting into.
At one point during ‘Pradakshina’, I suddenly felt the glimpses of what my future will be like. The very thought that the person sitting next to me is going to navigate the car I drive for the remainder of my life seized my nervous system.
I remember the priests were chanting the ‘Shanti’ mantra when I had that panic attack. The voice of the priests and the voice in my head started to overlap.
When the priests said: “Sarveśāam Svastir Bhavatu”, I heard, “You should have taken the left turn there.”
“Sarveśām Sāntir Bhavatu,” sounded like, “I think we’re close to the exit, slow down, you need to change the lane.”
“Sarveśām Pūrnam Bhavatu,” “Why are you rushing through the yellow light?”
“Sarveśām mangalam Bhavatu,” “I think this is the dead end. We should have asked for directions at that gas station.”
Those purohits were officially conferring the woman in the red saree sitting next to me, a permanent license to navigate my driving. No, no, no, no, no. I am a man and I don’t ask for directions. As a man, my function is to lose my way, and then blame the Mapquest.
“Sarveśām Mapquestam mistakem Bhavatu.”
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I truly believe that priests in Hindu culture need to be upgraded, or they should be entirely replaced by a newer version. Many times, I noticed those Version 1.0 priests repeating the same mantra from some holy skripture, which was written in Sanskrit a zillion years ago. And they don’t explain why they chant what they chant. They make you feel like a rational person in a Jihad school.
At one point, the ceremony suddenly turned into a weight-lifting contest. I was asked to lift my bride from the ground three times. I can understand lifting her once if the idea behind is, I should be able to carry her if she falls sick or becomes disabled. Why three times? I have never seen a paramedic lifting an injured person three times. I was so tired and stiff that the third time I lifted her up, my brand new pants tore open in the back. To make it worse, the sound I heard did not sound like the pants tearing.
There is a belief in Hinduism that there are four stages in life—childhood, youth, middle age, and old age. The idea of a marriage is to evolve an individual from the second to the third stage. After eight hours of uncompromising rites, I felt like those priests had accomplished their goal. I felt only diabetes away from the third stage.
To summarize, it did not feel like a wedding—it felt like I was consecrated. No wonder the divorce rate in Hinduism is so low. Who wants to go through that suffering again? You keep what you have.
“Damn it, I can see it’s a dead end, and I know I’m lost. But I’ll neither go back and ask for directions, nor will I leave you in spite of this constant nagging. If I’m stuck with you, you’re stuck with me too… Swahaa, la phool achhetaa chadhaau.”
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On a more serious note …
It may be true only in my extended family and my circle of friends; I absolutely felt no sense of adventure among us. We seem to be easily intimidated by novel endeavors because we have become a creature of habit. We live to prolong our lifestyle, not to change it. Our fear of failing is so evident in our strategy of not trying. That apathy is unequivocally exposed in a social event like wedding. We blindly follow these customs because we are not unique enough to question the premise behind these vague conventions. In no way my wedding was any different from that of my uncle in 1981 or of my sister in 1989. I have seen the photo albums of dozens of Nepali weddings, but I can’t set apart one from the other, including my own.
I can only hope and pray that my marriage is going to be as dull as my wedding, because my wife’s concept of not living a dull life is all about swiping plastic cards.
