B is for Bride

I spent four days with the family of a very good friend of mine who got married two Saturdays ago.

My connection to this family is not through the Bride though – I have been friends with one of her older sisters for seventeen years, and almost immediately from the start of my friendship with her, I was welcomed into their home like another daughter.

The Bride was thirteen years old, when her sister and I became friends, and after her sister got married and had children, myself and said Bride became closer as friends too.

Those of you who are Indian and who have friends who are Indian will know that an Indian wedding is a marathon, not a sprint. There are many little functions and events that happen during the week leading up to the wedding. Lots of fun, as all the family gathers to celebrate, but also a fertile breeding ground for petty squabbles and unnecessary drama.

Something that has always been a bitter pill for me swallow is my community’s tendency to measure a woman’s worth by her marital status. This is actually something that the Bride and I have lamented to each other many times. Every achievement you have ever earned gets overlooked when they hear you are a certain age and unmarried. The evening before the wedding, I managed to get the Bride alone (with her best friend) and it gave me an opportunity to tell her how proud I was of her, for all that she has achieved professionally (passed the bar exam at 22 and at 30, she is an associate at her law firm), for the way in which she has looked after and preserved herself (her virtue and, more importantly, reputation and dignity is beyond question), and mostly for not succumbing to her family or society’s pressure to marry before she was ready and before she had found the right person for her.

The morning of her wedding, we all gathered at the local mosque to bear witness to the marriage ceremony (called nikāh in Arabic).

I watched her as we heard her fiancé utter the words that would make her his wife…the happiness brimming over her eyelids outshone the breath taking bridal dress she was wearing, and I lost the battle against my tears. As the groom gazed upon her for the first time as his wife, I was absolutely certain my ribcage would shatter trying to contain the happiness that welled up in me.

Those looks remained on their faces for the rest of the day. And my prayer is that in the face of all the challenges they will undoubtedly face, that they would still be able to look upon each other as they did that day.