The Contemplative Eye

One of my fabulous nieces got married in a double ceremony last July—a Christian (I guess, sort of) ceremony in Chicago and, two weeks later, a decidedly Hindu ceremony in New Jersey.

Just so we’re clear: She married the same groom each time, my excellent literary-minded new nephew-in-law or whatever he is, a young professor at Depaul.

Both weddings were grand, and Mary and I had a ball because, after all, our presence was irrelevant and all we had to do was slounge around enjoying ourselves. Everyone else was, no doubt, a wreck.

The Hindu wedding had spectacular Indian food—the best we’ve ever eaten (with the possible exception of a ludicrously expensive skyscraper-joint in Manhattan)—and bhangra dance music that blew the roof off the hotel. The dancing was so much fun that when we got home to Maine I went online to try to find a local bhangra dance center or group for us to join—and, to my surprise, came up empty-handed.

When I asked about this at our favorite Indian restaurant, the owner, who has always been inordinately kind to us (sending out free jilabi for dessert, for example), answered me in an enthusiastic yet puzzling manner about how much “we like bhangra dancing at weddings.”

Mary, later, wisely interpreted this to mean that, for him at least, bhangra is part of Indian private life, or community life, not something like square dancing that you stage for a ticket-buying maelstrom of strangers.

Maybe so. But I persist in the view that if I bhangra-danced three times a week, I’d be svelte and gleeful into my eighties.

[Above: My niece's henna'ed hand. She wore a hallucinogenically beautiful traditional-style spangle-covered red Indian wedding dress that looked like it weighed—and did in fact weigh—30 pounds.]