Bhangra dancers, Marlboros, and a girl in a pink dress

January 4, 2015 5:37 PM

The Indian wedding that exploded in violence: a short story by Ranbir Singh Sidhu
posted by Joe in Australia (10 comments total)

Well, that crushed my romantic Monsoon Wedding notions.

Maybe the Hindu version just has a happier ending?

Goes to show how separate a culture is from religious tenets. India is a complex place.
posted by clvrmnky at 6:04 PM on January 4, 2015

A depressing slice of the same old rancid cake, sadly.
posted by nfalkner at 8:47 PM on January 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

I'm so grateful that I've never had to choose between family and civilization.
posted by the agents of KAOS at 10:54 PM on January 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

I appreciate what the author is trying to do, but this story sounds generously embellished, if not outright fictitious.
posted by vanar sena at 2:56 AM on January 5, 2015

I'm glad you said that, vanar sena, I felt the same way. "Downstairs, the female relatives of the girl took up her cause by wailing and beating their breasts. ... Soon they were tearing at their clothes." Really? Would this actually happen this way? Please correct me if I'm wrong.

But yeah, same story for a lot of different ethnic groups.
posted by Melismata at 8:09 AM on January 5, 2015

I had a girlfriend who was Indian (she was from Jersey, but her parents were from India), and she was put under an incredible amount of pressure to be culturally 'Indian" by her family despite the fact that she was much more naturally inclined to act like someone who had grown up in the U.S. This put a terrible stress on her, and on our relationship, since there was a fair amount of deception involved, as her family would have flipped out had they known she was sleeping with a white American. (They were also actively trying to marry her off the entire time we were together.)

I read this story the other day, and couldn't help but reflect on how unfair it is and how difficult it must be to get stuck in between the expectations of your family and culture and the life you actually want to live. I don't know how she's going to reconcile those conflicts in her life, but I hope she can find a situation where she can be happy, and she doesn't have to lie all the time.
posted by dortmunder at 8:29 AM on January 5, 2015 [1 favorite]

Melismata: "Really? Would this actually happen this way?"

Is it within the realm of possibility? Perhaps - by that point, every male Punjabi at that wedding probably had a third of a bottle of whiskey in him. Is it likely? Not in my experience. Not because a girl got asked to dance, of all things. Rural Punjab can certainly be very silly, but no, this doesn't ring true.
posted by vanar sena at 8:42 AM on January 5, 2015 [2 favorites]

I presume that this short story, written by an author recognised for his short fiction, is mostly or entirely fictional.
posted by Joe in Australia at 11:12 AM on January 5, 2015 [4 favorites]

Well, the author claims it is not fiction but purely factual.

(And I would have assumed that a fiction piece in Salon would be labelled as such, especially when the byline mentions both fiction and nonfiction work).
posted by the agents of KAOS at 11:56 AM on January 5, 2015

Huh. Well, fair enough.
posted by Joe in Australia at 12:00 PM on January 5, 2015