You Coming Sister Marriage?

Dear dedicated reader,

I came into my Spoken English class a week ago to find my boys huddled in a group around one bench, whispering feverishly to one another in Gujarati. I heard a snatch of “Melisha ma’am” and “Ketrin ma’am” as they spoke. What were they up to?

The huddle broke as they saw me and I saw Hitesh, my small, rambunctious and usually unprepared student from 9D hide something quickly behind his back. Oh god, I thought, I hope this tete a tete isn’t yet another attempt to scare me with a very realistic looking plastic lizard.

He walked slowly forward and a wide, toothy grin broke out in a shine across his face.

“Miss,” he said in his voice which is surprisingly scratchy for a kid, bringing his hand out from behind his back and presenting its contents to me, “you come in my sister’s marriage?”

I looked down at what he was holding out to me. It was a card upon which “Melissa ma’am and Cathrine ma’am” had been scrawled on the neat blank line designated for names and inside it was full of the Gujarati of a formal wedding invitation: our first.

“Of course,” I replied, delighted.

Apparently, Melissa and I had graduated from crashing weddings with Sejalben to being invited in our own right. Of course, this presented a new problem: were we ready to strike out on our own? I mean, an Indian wedding is not exactly the minute to minute affair of a New York wedding: there is lots of idle time between dinner and the ceremony, sometimes hours, for guests to roam and chat and somehow everyone (except for the clueless American teachers) knows how long this time is supposed to be. How would we fare without our crutches?

It turns out I needn’t have worried.

“We’re going to be late,” I whined as we readied ourselves to leave the house this afternoon for the wedding. As we threw the bolt closed on our front door, I ran my eye over Melissa’s sari and my own bangled arms, hoping we would be up to the measure of the critical Indian aunty’s eye.

We made our way as quickly as we could up the main road of Kadod and back into the neighborhood where Hitesh and his family live. I had often seen him when I was out on my bike, running around his plaid play shirt and school uniform pants. As we reached the road where I knew he lived, I realized I didn’t know where we were supposed to go. As many times as I had threatened to go to his house and tell his father about his Gujarati jokes, his missing text book, his constant lack of a pen, I had never actually done it because of his disarmingly adorable smile and so I didn’t actually know where he lived.

Confused, we stopped just outside the large temple which dominates this part of town and contemplated our next move. Kids and adults in finery were milling around, but there was no sign of any of our students. Melissa and I looked at each other. We were failing our first closed-book cultural test.

Luckily, our cheat sheet arrived.

“Miss!” Hitesh bounded out of a house up the street where a large tent had been set up for the wedding proceedings. He was dressed in a flat pressed blue collar shirt with a sewn in slogan on the back proclaiming ‘No Fear!” and a pair of tight jean pants. His hair had been slicked back and despite his diminutive size he was almost looking fourteen years old (which he is).

He stopped bounding just in front of me. “Hungry? You eat?” He asked me, smiling excitedly with eyes darting back and forth between me and Melissa. He immediately started leading us towards a large gravel yard at the end of the street where long bolts of cloth had been laid in parallel with large platters and bowls made from dried leaves placed in front. He indicated that we should sit, so after a moment of weak hesitation we did, and he plopped down right next to me.

As soon as we sat, the other mass of children who’d started to follow us out of curiosity and it turns out would follow us all night, also sat. By now, eating dinner had gained momentum and adults were following our lead and sitting to receive the portions that were being doled out by local boys (all my students, incidentally) onto the leaf plates.

“Miss,” Hitesh said, catching my attention and pointing, “this is my aunt, and that one, my uncle and that one my grandfather and there my grandmother.” It was the longest English sentence I had ever heard him speak.

“All your relatives are here?” I asked him.

“Yes, miss, and my sister, her marriage, she is in house for beauty parlor!” He said laughing at his own wit. As Mayur, one of his classmates, threw down a large spoonful of unidentified cooked and spiced vegetables onto my platter with a plop, Hitesh pointed at it.“In Gujarati, saag,” he said seriously and I nodded with a smile in appreciation for his identification, watching out of the corner of my eye as the boys who moved down the closely packed line of plates serving food kicked up dust as their shoes shuffled down the row. I then watched it settle on my food, smiled at Hitesh, and dug my fingers into the saag to take a bite.

After dinner, Hitesh took us and the cadre of seven to ten year olds who’d decided that they’re new occupation was trailing American teachers like lemmings to his uncles’ house where his sister was being readied for the wedding. He tried to shoo away the kids but they persisted in staying and staring at us with their big eyes so he merely blocked the stairwell as we made our way up the rickety steps to the second floor where his twenty year old sister Pritee was being adorned with jewels by her best friends. She tried to get up as we entered. “No no!” we insisted as we indicated she should sit. Both her arms were covered from the sleeve of her sari blouse all the way to her finger tips with deep, dark intricate mehndi.

Hitesh, who after a few minutes came running into the room after successfully stopping the onslaught of pre-teens introduced us to his sister as “my American teachers.” After a short congratulations, we left the house. As we got outside he said, “Now I am fresh, miss.”

I stopped, confused I stumbled to put our discarded sandals back on just outside the doorway of his house. “What do you mean?” I asked him.

He threw up his arm and exposed his freshly scented armpit to me. “Full Perfume!” He shouted happily.

“Oh, ah yes,” I said, as the scent of white jasmine floated towards me, “very nice.”

Undeterred by my tepid response, Hitesh charged forward into the street, motioning for us to follow. “She sister marriage nine and coming my house now groom and you see!” He smiled over his shoulder as he marched onwards.

Confused but trusting that he had everything in hand, we followed him (and the seven year olds followed us) out across the street to a house a little further down next to the gravel yard in which we had enjoyed our carefully narrated wedding banquet.

Leaving our sandals at the threshold, we ducked our heads past the low dark doorway and found ourselves in a room full of glittering saris and embroidered kurtas with relatives of the groom inside them. The groom himself lay sprawled out on the floor on a mat in the corner, relaxing but looking nervous. We gave a quick palms together ‘Namaste’ to everyone as moved through the room to the back, following the excitable Hitesh.

Inside the room, an old wrinkled woman in a purple silk sari indicated that we should sit, saying “Please seat yourself,” over and over to us in Gujarati. She came and sat next to us and took Melissa’s arm in her firm grip. One of the clan of seven year olds was sent dutifully for cold drinks.

She began to speak in a rhythmic, slow Gujarati, her tongue caressing each sound carefully. Her care, unfortunately, was lost on us as we looked at her blankly and then at Hitesh, who glancing quickly at the ceiling with a concentrated look, began to try and translate.

“You, married? She ask?” He said. We told her no.

“You… liking India?” His scratchy voice intoned again with intense concentration. This question and answer continued and each time he dutifully translated so the groom’s mother would be able to comprehend our answers.

I was ecstatic, but not because of the conversation or because of India. With every sentence of English Hitesh uttered, I became even more so. Here was a student who never, and I mean never, spoke English in the classroom if it could be avoided. Despite coming to Spoken English class everyday, he’d loll around at his bench, tell me in Gujarati that he didn’t bring a pen, and then after I gave him one wouldn’t open his notebook or follow directions and after it all would look at me sadly and say plaintively, “Miss, outside game?”

This was different, however: perhaps born out of a desire to meet the demanding rules of Indian hospitality and also his happiness at our coming to the event, Hitesh was now presented with a genuine communicative goal. And hence flowed forth the English!

I guess it was all he needed.

Best,
Cat