The Right Sort of Girl

by Anita Rani

  Those conversations always went the same way too:

  ‘Nitu.’ (Nitu is what my family call me, it’s my pet name. I’m Punjabi, of course I have a pet name.) ‘It’s time you got married.’ Subtle.

  It was a Friday night in 2008 and I was planning a lovely night in, disappearing into a YouTube musical journey, with a bowl of pasta. My brother wasn’t having any of it. I’d made him move to London after he’d finished his degree in cybernetics and robotics and was back home moping around in his old bedroom. I had to get him out of Bradford. I asked my brother what his dream job would be, which company would he like to work for? He said Saatchi & Saatchi, so I suggested he write a personal letter to the MD, explaining who he was and why he’d love to work for them (as well applying to at least 80 other companies!). Guess bloody what? He got an interview with the MD of Saatchi & Saatchi and they created a ruddy job for him! Jamminess runs in the family. So now he was living in my spare room. ‘Anita, you’ll become a cat lady. Come oooooon, let’s go ooooout.’ He may have started due to concern for his sister, but I think my brother was motivated by his own self-interest. I’d been invited to a warehouse party in Dalston that weekend, and in the mid 2000s, Hackney was a place only visited by those in search of the best music and underground parties. The gentrification wave hadn’t quite fully taken over this corner of east London yet, it was still home to places that had such appealing labels as ‘the murder mile’. We went, and as I climbed the concrete stairs of the warehouse, I was already happy. Industrial environments are a comfortable space for me to be in after a childhood growing up in factories.

  I can hear a distant bwwwaaaaammm, bwwaaamm, bwwwaaammm of a baseline getting louder and louder. My space, my comfort zone – where strangers, for one night only, become your best friends. The air is thick and warm, even the walls are sweating. Everyone is happy. But hang on, this place is different to any club, pub, rave, festival, secret gig, any social gathering I’ve ever been to, because 80 per cent of the kids in this room are brown like me! It’s like all the Asian misfits from around the UK have congregated in this room, for this one night. Beautiful Bengali girls from Birmingham, Gujarati kids galore, boys in make-up, boys who looked like Prince with double nose piercings. MY PEOPLE.

  Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs, Christians, all those labels left with our parents. Here we were, kids with a shared love of music and a shared brown experience. Second generation misfits. The oddballs who felt out of place where they grew up, all represented. All these kids knew the pain and joys of growing up South Asian in Britain. There may be different twists and turns in each of our stories but there’s an unsaid, unspoken bond between us. I met people who were creative and driven and trying to pursue their passions, all trying to make their mark, all hustling and battling a system not designed for them. In here, I found people who would lift me when I was down. Protect me if I messed up. Who would understand my hurt in an instant. They’d inspire me, support me and tell me terrible jokes. In here, it was us against them. In here, we were seen. In here, I met the man who was to become my husband.

  How did I clock him? It was hard to miss him, seeing as there was a bright light shining out from inside him.

  And, of course, he was well fit. We got chatting when I was about to leave but he insisted I stay as he was about to jump on the decks to play a set. Now he really had my attention! The first record he played was one of my absolute favourites, MJ Cole’s ‘Sincere’. There’s no way I could leave now.

  I called Mum to tell her I’d met someone.

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Bhupinder . . .’

  ‘BHUPINDER! Indian!’

  All my mum’s Diwalis and Vaisakhis had come at once. ‘Now get married, jaldi jaldi.’

  It was the same message from all my aunts, as soon as they found out I was dating someone Indian. And not just Indian, but a Punjabi. This is precisely the reason no Asian kids ever reveal to their parents that they are in a relationship, whether they’d approve of it or not, because as soon as they know, they expect you to get married. For them it’s the next logical step. The idea of long-term dating or, shock horror, moving in together, no no no no! That’s something for the ‘Western world’. For Asian parents, you meet and, if you’re not put off immediately by any kind of terrible body odour, you wed.

  A year later, we were getting married.

  There was a specific moment that propelled our relationship along. Grief can do that. It was Christmas 2008, four blissful months into our relationship. Mum called with the devastating news that my favourite uncle, the tattoo-covered artist, my dad’s little brother, had died. He was only 44. He was brilliant. The best human, the coolest uncle. I’d never lost a loved one, let alone the uncle who was the closest relation to me and Kul, who meant the world to us. I’d never experienced grief and, even now, I still find it very hard to talk about.

  The lad drove Kul and me back up to Bradford on the same night we got the news. It was surreal walking into my mum and dad’s home in Bradford at midnight. Everyone was in shock. Then the lad did something that came to him instinctively and I was amazed: he gave my dad a hug. Not an awkward back pat kind of hug, but a proper, meaningful, supportive, deeply thoughtful and moving hug. He held my dad. His capacity for vulnerability, sensitivity, compassion and kindness was something I’d never seen in a man and I was astounded. And, remarkably, my dad hugged him back. I’d never seen my dad hug like that before.

  In that moment, I thought – yes. Two months later, on a snowy mountain in the Alps, he proposed. Did I cry? No, I just felt really awkward for most of it. I cringe at big romantic gestures! I love giving but I’m terrible at receiving and I hadn’t yet made friends with my own vulnerability. So, marriage was always going to be an interesting exercise. We then snowboarded or rather, attempted to snowboard, down the mountain, towards the rest of our lives.

  I didn’t want a big Indian wedding in a hotel in Bradford, which is what pretty much everyone I knew usually went for. We had a couple of ideas for the type of wedding we wanted: Hackney Register Office with a tiny group of our closest family and friends, and a small party afterwards. Fat chance. As me and the lad both came with a Punjabi mother, the wedding was pretty swiftly taken out of our hands, whether we liked it or not.

  I didn’t want a big Indian wedding in a hotel in Bradford.

  We also had this wonderful idea of getting married in India, in my favourite state of Rajasthan. The state that has everything you expect India to have: palaces, ancient fortresses, elephants, camels, women draped in dreamy Rajasthani bandhani print, brightly coloured silk, dripping with chunky silver jewellery. It’s as romantic as it gets, and I could handle this level of romance by visiting one of my favourite places in India at the same time. I’d always secretly imagined a parallel life as a free-spirited, horse-riding, sword-wielding warrior princess living in a palace in Rajasthan . . .

  But I was marrying a British Indian who’d never set foot in India. The lad’s family are East African migrants who landed in London in the sixties. His dad was born in Kenya and his mother in Uganda, their stories intertwined with Empire also. They’d lost their connection with India two generations earlier. So, getting married there would first mean acclimatisation for his entire family to a land of their ancestors, plus, and this was the main issue, although the guest list would be kept slim by only a few people making the trip from Britain, we’d both have to invite a ton of people we are related to in India, most of whom he had never met in his entire life. My mum’s first cousins alone total 45, and that’s not counting their children and grandchildren and great grandchildren. The politics of Indian families is a minefield. My Rajasthani dream was ditched.

  Traditionally, Indian weddings take place where the bride is from. The groom’s party make the schlep to literally go and get the girl.

  I did not want a big Indian wedding in a hotel in Bradford.

  The next most obvious choice was the place where my heart reside
s and I feel most at peace, in the beautiful open expanse of the Yorkshire countryside. I found the perfect place, a stunning manor house surrounded by the verdant rolling hills of the Yorkshire Dales. Peaceful, beautiful and classy. Completely different to the usual two hotels everyone in Bradford ends up getting married in because they’re the only places big enough to deal with the enormous number of guests. This place was picture perfect AND it was big enough to have 250 people for a sit-down meal. Two hundred and fifty people, I hear you shriek! This, let me tell you, is a minuscule number for a Punjabi wedding.

  When I was a kid, we’d attend weddings with over 1,000 people. They tended to be organised chaos in a uniquely Asian fashion. Chaos was something I wanted to avoid at my own wedding. Actually, there were quite a few things I wanted to avoid at my own wedding. Could we ditch the old tradition of giving and receiving gifts from every single member of my family and every single member of Bhupi’s family? I absolutely didn’t want my parents buying me a ton of gold and sarees as part of my wedding trousseau. Was it possible to swerve that one? How about we leave off the guest list all the extended family I hardly knew and would never see again in my life?

  I had it all planned out. A simplified, classy, stress-free, streamlined, relatively intimate affair that would make a perfect day. My perfect day.

  ‘OW MANY?’ Dad blurted out when he heard 250. Then he just laughed. ‘No, no, no. That’s not nearly enough space. Where are we going to put the gate-crashers?’

  It was explained to me why Indian weddings are done a certain way and why my parents would like to follow the traditions, but not before the situation escalated into a full-blown barney with my mother telling me what a rebellious daughter I was: ‘I never asked my mother this many questions. Hai hai this kuri.’ It’s like Mum couldn’t wait to get rid of me. The burden of the free-thinking, wilful, 32-year-old daughter was finally being lifted, and with an Indian man. I wasn’t going to ruin it all at the last minute by doing away with all the traditions. They eventually explained that Punjabi weddings are a celebratory feast, a tradition left over from back in the day when we lived in villages (actually, really not that long ago, my dad was literally born in a barn) and the entire village would be invited as a way of connecting with your community. Most importantly, however, it was what my mum and dad wanted. And I couldn’t shake that dutiful daughter thing, no matter how hard I tried.

  I understood that my folks were part of a community in Bradford and they finally had the opportunity, after attending A LOT of weddings, to throw a big old party too. Marriage pressure aside, my parents had been pretty amazing at encouraging me and allowing me to really follow my dreams. They’d brought me up to be wilful and free-thinking, even if it did bite them on the arse at times. I love them. The politics of Indian families is complex and, if someone was missed off the list, my mother would never have heard the end of it. My parents wanted the honour of doing things the traditional way and even though I’ve spent a lifetime fighting to carve my own independent place in the world, they are my Achilles heel. Was this even really what my parents wanted to do, or were they in turn also going along with what was expected of them? Did they really want to spend a fortune and go through the hell of organising a week-long shindig, feeling permanently stressed and constantly managing difficult relations? This is community control in action. It tightens its grip and no one knows if they can actually just say no. What’s everyone scared of?

  Ultimately, I didn’t want to upset my parents, it wasn’t worth the battle, and not for them to feel hurt by me demanding what I wanted. See how it gets under your skin? I wanted my mum and dad to have their day. The day they’d always dreamed of. The day they’d waited for all my life. I went from the girl who was never getting married to the girl who would have an intimate wedding to the girl who had, what I call, ‘My big fat Punjabi sweat fest’.

  First, I had to schlep off to India with my mother and masi for an episode we’ll call Carry On Wedding Shopping. This isn’t uncommon for families with a connection to the motherland. The selection of wedding clothes in India is obviously far greater than the UK, plus there was a lot more to buy than just my wedding outfits: I get two wedding outfits, one for the religious ceremony, one for the reception. Outfits for every day of the week of ceremonies running up to the big day. There were all the outfits (21) for my wedding trousseau plus the jewellery. There were the clothes we give as gifts to my entire family, and to all my in-laws. Decorations for the house, all the bits and pieces required for the various ceremonies and, for some stupid reason, I thought it’d be a great idea to get invites and the matching sweet boxes I needed printed in Old Delhi. Most wedding invites are hand delivered with an accompanying box of sweets. I’d decided that I could at least have Yorkshire fudge in mine rather than the usual selection of barfi. We dashed around Delhi, Jalandhar and Patiala, frantic and fraught and of course we fought, but we also had a blast while we were there.

  I mentioned my apprehension about getting married to my mum on this trip, but she wasn’t having any of it. I needed to get on with what was happening, she said. I think she actually blanked me when I pressed. The wedding was organised in less than six months and the pressure was on from the beginning. I was already 32 and I wasn’t getting any younger. Of course, they were all thinking about children too – everyone apart from me, that is. Thankfully this wasn’t said to my face.

  It was to be a week-long affair. The henna ceremony, the wedding bangles ceremony, the getting covered in turmeric ceremony (to beautify me before the big day). I loved all the pre-wedding rituals. Then a Sikh ceremony at the Gurdwara in Bradford followed by a reception big enough to hold 450, you heard right, 450, of my nearest and dearest! Yes, I was having a big Indian wedding in a hotel in Bradford.

  Me and the lad were both the first in our families to get married. This was finally an opportunity for our families to do what they had always dreamt of doing. To be able to hold their heads up with pride at their children having a traditional Indian wedding. We decided as long as the two of us were there, we’d let them do what they wanted. And it was a hoot. My friends had an incredible time going from parties to ceremonies to rituals, to costume changes and chicken tikkas and seekh kebabs and aloo tikkis, to bhangra dancing and henna applying and curries and rice and chapattis and naans, borrowing sarees and being draped in silk, wearing all the bling they could get their hands on, and actual legitimate bindi wearing (not at a music festival). But my God, it came at a price. Punjabi weddings cost several arms and legs. They are like a mini festival.

  The week of the wedding arrived, stressful, chaotic but joyful. Our house was crammed with relatives, doing what Indian relatives do best: eating and having conversations by shouting in each other’s faces. There was dancing in one room, henna being applied in another, kids playing computer games, a permanent pan of chai on the go and a constant production line of food preparation for seven days straight. I tried to make sure I was present for most of it but there was so much going on, I really don’t think it had sunk in. Plus, I had to make a dash back to London for two days during the week to present Watchdog. My favourite ceremony was the night before the wedding. A beautiful and intimate ritual of putting on my choora, my red wedding bangles. They are dipped in milk and then my maternal uncles and their wives put the bangles on me. I’d watched my aunt in India 25 years earlier have the skin scraped off her knuckles as the choora was too small, but thankfully, mine fit.

  This was to be the calm before the storm. The day of the wedding, Bradford treated us to a torrential downpour. The rain came in so fast and at such an acute angle it was practically horizontal. Traditionally, the groom arrives on a white horse with the groom’s party dancing behind him, but the weather was so God-awful the horse had to be cancelled at the last minute. Bhupi had to wade out into the deluge in his wedding regalia: turban, full-grown beard, sherwani and sehra (a sparkly curtain in front of his face), to see the bloke with the horse, who was pulled up right in front
of the temple, waiting for his cash! What a hero (Bhupi, not the horse).

  The guests made their way into the temple and took their seats on the floor, shoes off and heads covered. Bhupi took his seat in front of the holy book, awaiting his bride. For everyone watching, the ceremony was beautiful, Sikh weddings always are. It was serene and calm on the outside, but I was having an out-of-body experience for all of it. Not really understanding how this was happening in my life. I’m not sure my mum could watch. I think she had her eyes closed, praying throughout the ceremony. I don’t remember Mum smiling. After a lifetime of pressure to get me married, on the actual day my mum was sad. Go figure!

  Once the religious ceremony was over, we headed down into the temple basement to conduct the legal bit of the wedding. I had to jump over a hoover and slide between stacked-up tables. The ‘uncle’ registrar could barely speak English, so he got the names, birthdates and occupations all mixed up. My marriage certificate is covered in crossings out. Oh, the glamour!