My wedding day has always been a bit of a lemon in my mouth. The photos and videos have been locked away and I rarely look at them, lest the sourness rushes in, resulting in the inevitable finger-pointing between my husband and me. It's unfortunate that such a special day be thus ruined for anybody, but it's O.K. Worse things have happened.
At my wedding party, my mother's face looked painted pink. It looked like she was making an effort to look pale skinned while being deeply brown. Many comments were made-- all of them from my in laws and not all of them directly to me -- on my mother's appearance, her apparent eagerness to look "fair" which had caused her to look like a pantomime artist, her perceived lack of good taste and makeup skills. One random lady from my husband's family recently came up to me at an event and almost without context, said "tomar ma k dekhe monay hoyechhilo khub old fashioned, conservative, na? " (Your mother appeared to be rather old fashioned and conservative when I met her at your wedding, no?) I knew there was a translation for this, which read as, "your mother is not polished and sophisticated like us, no?"
I did not answer this woman at the time since it seemed to me that validating her question with any explanation will be an insult to myself and to Ma. I simply smiled and turned my face away. People who know me and my family, my friends for example, who have spent many many nights in my house-- with perfect freedom to think of my parents' house as their own, have been drunk and stoned, have burnt down our living room couch, have borrowed saris from my mother-- know my her as a woman who is anything but old fashioned. Fortunately for me, none of my friends have been people who considered speaking fluent English, or blindly imitating the West as a sign of progressive behavior. To shun all things Bengali in an effort to appear cosmopolitan has been scoffed at by my immediate and extended family and by my large and rather accomplished circle of friends. So, in these circles, Ma has neither been old fashioned nor conservative. She has simply been a middle class, educated, Bengali mother, who also happened to be a banker for 27 years of her life.
My family consists of three people. Ma, Baba and me. It's your atypical Indian nuclear family. When it came to the traditional Bengali wedding of their only daughter, these two people nearing sixty, my Baba and Ma, pulled off a wedding party with a 700plus guest list with amazing aplomb. The venue was perfect, nothing malfunctioned, services were payed for on time, the guests were received with a smile and a nomoshkar, the food was sumptuous and there was enough of it for everybody. No one went away with any complaints, which is generally the mark one aims to hit at any Indian wedding.
On the day of my wedding, right up to the time to leave for my wedding venue, Ma was working. Taking care of big and small details, while continuously supplying people who were getting ready in our house with whatever they needed--safety pins, water, hair clips. You know, the little things.
She wore her sari in the bathroom. Tied her hair without a mirror. She then put on her jewellery and her make up in the car on the way to the wedding hall. Looking her best was the last thing on her mind as she worried about things being even a little less than perfect on the wedding of her only child. And yet, her sari was exquisite, her jewellery tastefully matched, her thick, long, black hair in a simple but tidy plait falling down to her knees. Once at the venue she remained collected, gracious and charming, right up till the moment when her blood pressure shot up and she quietly, without a fuss, removed herself to a small room at the back, where she collapsed and had to be treated immediately. This was done so surreptitiously, that I learned about this much later and most guests still do not know of it. The wedding went on without any diversion.
In her youth, Ma had been a striking woman, tall and slender, with long thick hair, an easy smile and great taste in clothes. She turned heads at a lot of places and had many admirers.
And at 52, I would not hesitate to say that it requires a rare kind of beauty and charm to look as good as she did on that day, even with slightly off make up. Would you?
