3
MY ABSOLUTE FAVORITE PART OF THE WEDDING DISTRACTSme from all of my worries. It even perks Priti up from her bridesmaid melancholy. Food!
For starters, the waiters bring out kebabs and sticks of chicken shashlick with green and red fried peppers stuck between the pieces of chicken. I start piling food onto my plate before the waiter has even set everything down. The Auntie sitting opposite us looks at me fearfully, like she didn’t think Priti and I could be so ravenous in our hunger. I smile back at her, hoping that she’s not too closely related to Sunny Apu.
I’m about to start eating when Priti stops me with a tap on my shoulder.
“You can’t eat with your hands,” she says with a frown.
“Why not?” But I realize the answer as I look around and notice that everybody else has picked up the cutlery next to their plates and is politely cutting into their kebabs. Like we’re Westerners and not Bengalis.
“I can’t believe we’re supposed to eat like white people even at a Bengali wedding,” I complain in a whisper.
Priti rolls her eyes, but says nothing, probably hoping I’ll get fed up with complaining and just shut up. I have more to say, but I’m far too hungry, and the Auntie at our table has piled so much food onto her plate already that I’m afraid I won’t get to seconds unless I start stuffing my face right now.
I reach out for my knife and fork, but knock them over in my hurry to get to the food. They make a loud clanking noise on the way down. I catchherlooking over out of the corner of her eyes, and my cheeks heat up with embarrassment. Does she remember me?
“This is what happens when we give in to Western traditions,” I whisper to Priti before ducking underneath the table. Grabbing hold of the knife and fork, I try to stand, but due to the pencil heels I never wear, I underestimate my height and bump into the table with a loud bang.
“You’re making such a scene!” Priti says in a delighted way. Like she couldn’t have asked for anything better.
“Shit, shit, shit,” I mumble. Priti’s head appears under the table, and she extends an arm adorned with clinking gold churis. I take it, muttering, “shit, shit, shit,” all the way up because my head is throbbing. This is definitely not what I need before sitting down to a lovely wedding dinner.
The Auntie opposite us gives me a filthy look as I take my seat, and I feel my face heat up all over again as I realize she must have heard me curse.
“Siss!” I cry this time. “The floor of this wedding hall is so gross, Auntie! You wouldn’t believe it.”
She doesn’t look like shedoesbelieve me but I give her a smile nonetheless. Priti is in a fit of giggles beside me. I shoot her a grin before enthusiastically digging into my kebab. All of the embarrassment, and the Auntie’s judgment, will be worth it if the kebab is good.
“Mmmmmm,” says Priti, when she has finally gotten over her giggling fit for long enough to put some food into her mouth. I’m too busy piling more kebabs onto my plate to reply.
“You know there’s a main course, right?” Priti grins after I’ve eaten my fourth kebab.
“Will the main course have these kebabs though, huh?” I’m feeling pretty glad that we managed to find seats separate from Ammu and Abbu.
“I wonder what the main course will be?” I ask Priti. I’m hoping for biryani. That one’s easy enough to eat with cutlery. Priti rolls her eyes. As if she’s not thinking the exact same thing as me.
We talked about this wedding for ages. The whole summer, really. It’s the first wedding we’ve attended where we actually play a role—but that wasn’t the part we were excited about. We were far more excited about what the cuisine at a Bengali wedding set in Ireland could be like.
“They won’t have the typical Bengali wedding dishes, right?” Priti had asked one summer day—a day where the sun had decided to grace us with its presence and we were both lounging in our backyard, me with a book in hand and Priti with one earbud in her ear and one dangling down her neck.
“What? You don’t like korma and polau?” I asked.
She frowned. “They’re just a bit boring, aren’t they?”
I rolled my eyes. Priti never complained about them being too boring when we were in the midst of wedding season in Bangladesh.
Still, one thing was clear from the get-go—for us, this wedding is all about the food.
I can barely contain my excitement when the waiter brings around the main course: Platters full of biryani that smell like heaven on a plate. Priti gives me a look that saysdon’t grab the biryani dish before the rest of the table have taken some,presumably because the Auntie opposite us is eyeing the biryani with even more fervor than me. I think this is a little unfair. The Auntie is an adult and can have as much biryani as she wants any old day. I can only have it when Ammu deems it enough of an occasion to cook us some.
Priti and I patiently wait, watching the waiter bring out more and more dishes—a bowl of steaming lamb curry, plates of naan, a small bowl of mung daal, and a plate of chicken tikka. While the Auntie spoons biryani onto her plate I grab the naan, tossing one to Priti and another onto my plate.
“Am I supposed to eat this with a fork and knife too?” I grumble under my breath, tearing at the bread with my fingers and following it with a forkful of lamb curry. It’s the most unsatisfactory way of eating I’ve ever been subjected to. It’s cruel, really, to have a Bengali wedding full of Bengalis but expect them to eat in a totally non-Bengali way. I’m almost missing the weddings in Bangladesh; at least there we were free to eat with our fingers, even if it was unbearably hot and the food was almost always korma and polau.
After our plates are hoisted away, all the guests begin to rise. The bride and groom have obviously finished their dinner and are sitting up on the stage at the front of the hall. They sit on a settee lined with gold and silver that looks more like a throne than commonplace furniture. Sunny Apu looks a little bit like a princess sitting on it in her red and gold dress, her urna draped over her head almost casually. I know from experience that it has probably been pinned into place by a stylist to maintain that casual look.
What really makes her look like a Rajkumari, though, is the jewelry she’s draped with. There are heavy gold bangles clinking on each of her hennaed wrists and a gold chain hanging from her neck, settled gently over her dress, but the bit I love most is the golden chain that clasps around her nose and stretches all the way to her ears. It seems heavy, but somehow it works on Sunny Apu. She pulls it off almost effortlessly.
