Category: Indian marriages
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Essay: Arranged Marriage
This essay appeared in Centered: The magazine of personal stories in 2019. It is an excerpt from my work in progress memoir. Standing in the living room where I rented a room in Jeevan Bima Nagar in Bangalore, I tried to process what was happening. My father declared, “We are coming this weekend.” What is the hurry? I wanted…
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Building A Sonata
Earlier this week, a friend shared this letter (excerpt 3). Words that have stuck with me for over two decades now when I first discovered Bach and the Bridge Across Forever. There was even a time when I thought I could not get married to someone who cannot discuss stuff like this with me. Eighteen years…
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#ShaluNalShaadi #Delhi #PaneerMasalaOnBananaLeaf
I am at my desk flipping through pictures from the wedding on my phone. In what can only be termed whirlwind, we flew to Delhi last week to attend a cousins wedding. We returned late Saturday night after 34 hours of travel with three exhausted and sick kids. Ammu on waking Sunday morning declared “I…
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Love In The In-Between Spaces
I sat across my friend at the local Indian restaurant. Our plates full and the tables too close together. I tried hard to not notice our neighbor giving us a little too much attention. We sat, her and I, talking about our daughters and exchanging notes on the local elementary school. This lunch would have…
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On marriages, love and excuses
Seated across the office at the children’s school for a small talk on adoption (a whole another post altogether) being a means to build a family, I engaged in conversation with the administrator. It started simply enough with her advising a colleague about dresses on sale at David’s Bridal. “You only wear it once!” she…