My Best Friend8217;s Wedding

I lost a friend this weekend. My best friend, actually. To a wedding. Hers. What a disastrous end to the millennium, but truth be told, I ...

I lost a friend this weekend. My best friend, actually. To a wedding. Hers. What a disastrous end to the millennium, but truth be told, I had seen it coming a long, long time ago. Roughly around the time I decided to get married. Organised overnight, I had less than 10 people including the groom at my wedding and my trousseau comprised four pairs of jeans and many Cotton World tee shirts. Even though she knew me well, my friend could not understand why I was going about things sans circumstance with a complete disregard for traditional rituals. We didn8217;t argue but I knew that she would8217;ve done things differently. I just didn8217;t realise how differently. And how much in advance the difference would start to show.

Two months before her wedding, a gaggle of girls was gathered for a powwow. There was a wedding to be held and arrangements had to be made on a war footing. The cards had to be printed, mehendiwallis had to be booked, the trousseau had to be finalised 8230; there was so much to do and so little time.So each friend was given an quot;all-importantquot; task. The creative ones would decorate the house, the mandap and the reception hall. The artistic ones would write the invitations in calligraphy and do the Warli paintings on the floors. The organised ones would make sure each sari had a blouse and petticoat, and that each salwar kameez had a dupatta. The quot;good cooksquot; people who actually enjoy the chore would test the caterer. By now, it was clear to me that I had no role to play in any of this. I cannot cook, create or do rangoli to save my life. The extent of my artistic ability is limited to drawing an iffy line of eyeliner across my eyelid.

But if I was a non-voting member at that meeting, soon, I was totally out of it. An army of little women took over my best friend8217;s house and life and soon the walls began to bounce off conversations revolving around zardosi work and crystal beads. Closer to the time of the wedding, whichever room I headed into, I invariably tripped across a girl doing rangoli, orknocked over girls decorating pots and pans with gende ka phool I always mix that word with its more interesting cuss version.

By then, I had also started to have serious doubts about my gender. Maybe I was a man and I didn8217;t know it. After all, I loathed mehendi looks like leprosy, don8217;t like flowers my head is no flowerpot and hate dressing up I own two sarees that I wear every time the need arises. Most of all, I detest weddings for making me feel inadequate. Now, don8217;t get me wrong. I support the institution in fact, I think everyone should get married many, many times. I just don8217;t think that weddings should reinforce every stereotype I have struggled to overcome. We are at the end of the millennium and women still have to be the ones get all excited about a wedding while the guy gets away with calling it a jail sentence. Girls who are not the bride have to wander around looking as coy as the blushing bride, while the single guys congratulate themselves on escaping the marriage net. And worstof all, women have to sit around singing off-key, playing the dholak while the men do the fun stuff like drinking and smoking. No sir, that will not do at least for me.

So, I refused to subscribe to those cliches and showed my resentment clear on the wedding day. By taking a stand and refusing to do all the quot;girl stuffquot;? No. Did I take the decision not to attend my best friend8217;s wedding? No. I showed my defiance by not behaving like a girl. Which meant, on the actual day of the wedding, I was a nervous wreck: I had nothing to wear. An almost cream blouse was worn with a not-quite cream sari, hair was left loose because I hadn8217;t organised to have it tied up and fake pearls were worn instead of family heirlooms because I hadn8217;t bothered to go to the locker. It seemed that disaster and doom were dogging my footsteps.But you know what? In spite of myself, I had a blast. Without even trying. I finally saw that my friend and her husband-to-be were happy, really happy to be there. And strangely enough, that madeit worth it. Sure, they were equally stressed out, equally harangued and equally exhausted but when they looked at each other they were also equally in love.

And that did it for me! I am, at the end of the day, a sucker for happy endings.

Nonita Kalra is features editor, The Indian Express.