bole chudiyan

The house is a murmur that will soon become a dull roar. My mother’s sisters will arrive first; then my cousins with my nieces and nephews. The noise has already started in my head. I’ve begun a list of all the little details that haven’t been handled yet. My sister is getting married on Saturday, and after a year and a half of planning, the week has finally arrived.

Sunday

I have been planning a surprise dance for the mehndi on Thursday with my cousins. We’ve set aside time today for our first group practice. My local cousins are due at the house around 1pm. My sister unexpectedly decides to come over for brunch in the morning. I eat my poha in large spoonfuls, hoping I can get her out the door by 12:30pm so she doesn’t run into anyone.

Dance practice is hybrid; one cousin isn’t in town yet, so once everyone arrives, we hop on video. Most of us sheepishly confess we haven’t choreographed our solos, so we work on the group dance portion instead – which I had only choreographed two weeks ago. The dance moves aren’t complicated, but it’s a fast song with a strong beat. After an hour of run throughs and a lot of water, we call it a day and plan to sneak in one more practice on Wednesday during the family mehndi.

Now I have to learn the other dances for the reception. One of my cousins is still here, and she teaches me those ones. These will be more formal, performed on the dance floor after the wedding and before dinner on Saturday. I’ve watched the videos but haven’t had time to learn the steps yet. Whatever skill I have left over from my ten years of dance comes in handy for learning steps quickly. My head is crammed full of choreography for the next few days. I hum my songs or dance as I do chores and run errands.

Tuesday

I sit on the floor of my mother’s closet, making sets of bangles for myself and my mother. Six sets; one each for the mehndi on Thursday, the welcome reception on Friday, and the wedding and reception on Saturday. We’ll need to pack the latter sets to take to the hotel on Friday; only the mehndi is at the house.

There are three shelves full of bangles, some sorted by color, others jumbled together after the last event they were worn to. Some are in small boxes straight from the shop in India, and others are housed in little suitcase-like jewelry cases especially designed for them. It is a small, disorganized version of the bangle shops in Delhi, where you can bring in a sari or a lehenga and the shopkeeper makes you a custom set to match.  

I bring a piece of each outfit into the closet and hang it so I can match the colors exactly. My mother’s sari for Saturday is mustard and red, with hints of green and purple. Glass or metal bangles? The glass is more delicate, but sometimes the color rings truer. I like the bangles to bring out all the colors, but I want to be sure the set looks elegant, with some gold to bring out the richness of the embroidery. I make my set the way I watched my mother do it when I was a child, passing the growing set from one hand to the other as I introduce new colors.

It's peaceful in my mother’s closet; it’s tucked far enough into the house that the rest of the house is muted. When my mother and her two sisters get together, it’s rarely quiet. Then I hear them coming closer; my mother is showing my aunt her sari. I bring out my first stab at a set, but my aunt dismisses it; the orange is not the right shade. I’ve been using the blouse to match instead of the sari, which contains most of the mustard color. I take the sari back into my sanctuary to find the right orange.

Wednesday

Everyone is here. My aunts and uncles, my cousins, my nieces and nephews. I haven’t been with this much family since 2019. I’ve removed the two gold bangles I usually wear on my right wrist so they won’t get in the way. Today, the family gets their mehndi done. My sister’s bridal mehndi will take nearly five hours, even with two artists working on her, so it makes sense to do ours separately today as well so we can enjoy the event tomorrow. The rest of the women of the family take turns filling our palms and the backs of our hands with the artists’ intricate designs; we have to look the part of the bride’s side. The men are managing the food and the kids, and almost everyone has a drink.

I have been squeezing in solo choreography here and there. Our solo snippets for tomorrow’s dance are each only a minute or so; not terribly long, but just long enough that I need to have a plan. My cousin, our default music mixer, has been helping me stitch the songs together seamlessly to create one track. He and I put on the finishing touches. While my sister is occupied, my cousins and I sneak downstairs to get in one full practice together with the music. We run through the full medley once and the group dance twice for posterity. I worry our absence will be conspicuous if we are gone too long, so we go back upstairs. Good timing, as dinner is being served and everyone is ravenous.

My mother and aunts sing and play the dholki. They try to get dancing going, but everyone is too distracted, preoccupied with finally being together again. It’s almost as if we knew we needed to save our energy for tomorrow.

Thursday

I come downstairs, rubbing the sleep from my eyes, and see my mother and my sister in the middle of the family room, trying to scrape off the last of my sister’s mehndi so she can go to brunch with her future in-laws. I sit down to help. My sister reminds me that she needs a set of bangles to go with her outfit tonight; she hadn’t decided on what she was wearing when I was here in June, so I hadn’t made a set then. It will be an excuse to hide inside later.

I only remember the set needs to be made after I run errands and help with set up outside. By then, it’s nearly 2pm and I need to shower, get dressed, and do my makeup. I am sweaty from the hot day and almost hope it will rain briefly to break the heat, even though everyone is worried about the decorations and the lack of overhead cover outside. I duck into my mother’s closet after I shower, navigating around my aunt doing my sister’s makeup and my mother putting her sari on. I have her skirt with me to match the bangles. It’s covered in flowers made up of blue, purple, red, orange and yellow. I make a multi-colored set with bright pink pops to match her blouse, and help her slide them on as she’s touching up her lipstick. She always tries to slide all of them on at once, rather than putting on two or three at a time. I caution her to slow down, worried she’ll cut up her beautifully decorated hands.

The mehndi starts at 4pm. It is unbelievably humid. It did rain, briefly, at 3pm, but somehow the air is even thicker than earlier in the day. I wonder how I’m going to dance in this weather when I can’t stand still without sweating. I am lucky; I’m wearing an Indo-Western outfit, a light, patterned skirt slit to the thigh with an Indian style sleeveless blouse. Most of the family is wearing much heavier clothes, with many of the men in full sleeved kurtas.

Our dance happens around 5:30, after the sun has passed over the patio – a small blessing. I am a bit nervous; my solo dance is going to be a little off-the-cuff, and I still wonder if we practiced the group number enough. But there’s nothing I can do now. The music starts. I am third. I watch the other girls take their turns, and I dance out when it’s mine. I do mix up my steps a little, but no one knows, and I never stop dancing. I exit the “stage” and wait for our finale.

I open the song, doing the first two lines of the song myself. The cousins slide in on line three. The music, unfortunately, has not been holding strong; it keeps going in and out, and I mouth “sorry” to my sister. She says, “Don’t be, you’re carrying it!”. We all keep smiling because it’s so ridiculous and before I know it, we’re done. My sister and her fiancé are surprised and happy. We pulled it off. There is clapping and much hugging.

As it gets later, the humidity still doesn’t break. We eat dinner, mingle, laugh, catch up. I don’t have any other obligations for tonight. My future brother-in-law’s cousins find us after dinner. They want to get some dancing started. I’m always ready to dance, and I know most of my cousins are, too. I grab some recruits and bring them out to the patio, where we performed earlier. The music has almost completely stopped working at this point; many men go to investigate and eventually, the verdict is that the system has succumbed to overheating. I can sympathize.

One of my cousins remembers the speaker my mother had borrowed from a friend for the family mehndi yesterday. He gets it set up and starts playing music. It’s not as loud as before, but it’s enough. A few of us start dancing, and slowly, more join in. It starts to sprinkle - lightly, just enough to feel incredibly refreshing after the long, hot day. We embrace it and keep dancing.

I’m not sure when the rain really picks up - but at some point, it’s pouring, and we’re all still dancing. A few people do run to cover, but my cousins and I are all out there, and so is my sister and her fiancé. We keep trying to rope in more people, but some are hiding from the rain, and the shuttles have started to leave to take guests back to Boston. Eventually, reluctantly, we pack our friends and my sister’s fiancé onto the last shuttle, soaking wet. And then we keep dancing. Someone wisely drapes a towel over the speaker so we don’t lose the music a second time. It feels like something out of a Bollywood movie. We dance until my hair is dripping, until my feet are hurting, until my new blouse has bled blue into my white skirt. I forget sometimes just how much I love to dance.

Friday

I unpack in my hotel room Friday afternoon, pulling out three or four cases of bangles. I have mine for tonight and tomorrow, along with a mishmash of colors for my friends who will wear Indian clothes tomorrow as well. I love these cylindrical cases; they display my bangles elegantly, and they nestle perfectly into my suitcase, too.

My feet are incredibly sore from yesterday’s dancing. As I get ready, running from my room to my sister’s room to my mother’s, I wear my most comfortable sandals, avoiding my heels till the last second. One of my friends comes up to my room at my behest to work her magic with eye makeup. After she makes my lids a dramatic pearly pink, I send her on her way with the bangles for tomorrow. I slip on my gown, have my mother pin my dupatta, have a headband tucked into my loose curls, and spritz on perfume before slipping on my own bangles. Tonight’s are a mix of cream and pink, heavier on the pink to highlight the color in the skirt of my anarkali.

There is no dancing tonight, just mingling and drinks and a buffet-style dinner. It’s a different mix of people than yesterday, so there is more catching up with family and friends. My sister has gold and silver metal bangles sparkling on both her arms, sets I made to go with her pale mint pre-draped sari. They’ve been stored in a beautiful red and gold jewelry box since June, designed to hold bangles along with her earrings and necklaces, tikkas and toe rings.

The welcome reception ends early in the night, 9:30pm, so the younger crowd decides to meet at the bar to keep drinking. I have a dance practice standing between me and my next drink. My sister wants to rehearse her surprise dance with the other girls, since we haven’t practiced together yet. She’ll be far too busy tomorrow. I’m in the front row, so I have to know my steps. But half my mind is already downstairs. I’ve changed into shorts and a tee, though I haven’t touched my makeup or my jewelry. We do a few run-throughs in her suite, punctuated by giggles when anyone messes up. My sister wants to take it easy tonight, so I make sure she is cozied up before going down to the bar.

Saturday

I stayed up later than I should have, gossiping with my cousins and gobbling down dosas from a late-night adventure. My alarm wakes me up at 8am and I drag myself out of bed. My feet still hurt.

I have two outfits and two dances today, and a million little things to do in between. I wanted to wear a classic sari for the wedding, something simple and elegant. I have one in light blue with a gold border that I’ve always loved, and my aunt brought a gold blouse from India that compliments it nicely. I keep my jewelry simple; a gold chain around my neck, gold hoops in my ears, my nani’s gold bangles, two on each wrist, and her pile around my ankles.

My sister is resplendent in red and gold, traditional bridal colors, and she has a bright new red and gold set of bangles from India to match. I hook her anklets and slip her toe rings on; the skirt of her lehenga is too big for her to do it herself. Her anklets shimmer as she walks.

We watch the baraat dance its way down the bridge to the wedding altar from my sister’s suite. It’s an awkward angle, so we’re all crowded around the corner window where we can just make them out. A few of my sister’s friends are sent videos of the dancing, distracting us momentarily from the window. Even though I’m not allowed to be down there, the rest of our cousins are, and they are dancing in full force, despite the hot day. They make it to the flowered bower faster than I realize, and I’m bolting down and across the street to be part of the family welcome. My cousins awkwardly cross through, cutting off the boy’s side, to ensure they’re standing as part of our family’s welcome. After my mother has completed her ceremony, I feed my soon-to-be brother-in-law something sweet.

The ceremonies (one Hindu, one Protestant) are short and sweet. After the wedding is over, the sisters of the bride negotiate with our new brother-in-law to get some cash in exchange for safe return of the shoes he removed to get on the mandap, a beloved tradition.

My sari was pinned so neatly that it’s easy to slip out of it once my blouse is unhooked. I slip on the skirt and blouse for my evening lehenga, and trade out my nani’s jewelry for something splashier. My bangles are a mix of deep green and gold, nearly a perfect match for my blouse.

By the time I get downstairs, the cocktail hour is halfway done. This is the best time to do a dry run of any dance. No one is seated in the ballroom yet, the DJ is all set up, and everyone is drinking, eating, and milling around. I only have time to grab two or three appetizers from passing waiters before I am corralled into the ballroom for dance practice. The aunties and uncles also borrowed our idea and had rehearsed first. This is for my second dance of the evening, a group dance with the friends we grew up with. We do three run-throughs, our first time practicing all together, with the usual joking, positioning, and last-minute step corrections. This isn’t our first wedding performance. We are deemed acceptable by a friend’s daughter on our third practice. I come back out to find a glass of wine and my friends. One of my friends is wearing the bangles I had given her yesterday, but she has slid them on without a pattern, arms mismatched. I have her remove all of them at the cocktail table we’re standing around, and I sort them by design and build them into two matching sets to slide over each wrist. I realize no one else will care, but the matching sets soothe my nerves and keep my hands off my wineglass.

The ballroom doors open and we take our seats. There are two speeches and two dances before my two dances, and I’m impatient for them to be over, even as I enjoy them. I can’t fully relax until my last duties are discharged. My niece does an enthusiastic dance to a medley of songs, and my parents and their friends perform their oft-practiced dance very nicely.  

Then it’s my turn. I tuck my heels under the dinner table and take my place on the dance floor, barefoot. The first dance is my sister’s, to a song from her favorite movie that I know her new husband has likely seen multiple times. The Bollywood classic Kuch Kuch Hota Hai was screened many, many times in our childhood. It is a sweet song, about falling in love, and it’s a surprise for her husband when my sister joins us on stage. He comes up afterward to give us all hugs. Little does she know he has a surprise up his sleeve, too.

They both sit down again and the rest of us take our places for the next dance. This one is three songs sewn together; the first is one of my favorites, from one of my favorite Bollywood movies, also screened many times. I smile as the music comes on. The boys go on first, and manage to look charming despite their unsynchronized moves. We girls dance our way on about 30 seconds in, and we all do the chorus together before prancing off for the next group. Everyone comes back onto the floor as the music starts for the final song. This one is about the groom coming to get his bride, and as the groom sings out in the song, my sister’s husband comes up to join us. She is smiling and clapping along, and as the song winds down, we go and get her to join us as we dance out the last few seconds. There is much hugging and clapping and a group picture.

I am done. I sit down to eat my salad and gulp down my wine. I need fuel to dance the night away. The DJ is great – he cycles through Bollywood hits and American ones, bouncing between the two every few songs. Everyone dances at least a little bit, though the crowd thins as the hour gets later. My nieces and nephews slowly disappear with their grandparents, and my cousins, now untethered, dance as we did on Thursday. The reception ends with two classics – “I Want It That Way” and “Amplifier”. A little something for everyone. I’m a little sorry this week is coming to an end. Despite the insanity, it’s flown by, and I can’t believe it’s already over.

P.S. Bole Chudiyan is a song from another classic Bollywood movie, Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham. Translated, it means ‘my bangles are speaking’.