Wedding Vignettes: Chaos-city

Pretty much any big city you go to in India is chaotic. There are always the crowds, the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning for oxygen to breathe, for roads to drive on, pavements to walk amongst the wretched refuse on the streets ... (now there’s a twist to the New Colossus).

So we left one crowded city (Bombay) for one less so (Ahmedabad). A lot less people, but a lot more dust. A lot less traffic, but it still takes you a long time to get from one end to the other. While we did most of the clothes-shopping in town, we had to go to the ‘city’ to buy the pooja stuff. All fingers pointed towards Manek Chowk.

Manek Chowk. Think Mall. Rows and rows of shops. Wares for sale. Hordes. Noise. Dust. Autos. Cycles. Scooters. Honking. Heat. And the occasional cow. Ok. Don’t think mall. Think chaotic orient-style bazaar. I go into a western mall like I am entering the Temple of Doom. Here I have no depression whatsoever and am eager to dive into this house of babel for which a blindfolded architect must have drawn designs.

Only a fool would take a car past the gate, so our driver Bachubhai parks nearby and hails an auto for us. A few minute’s worth of hair-raising, Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride later, we pass through the ancient, stone gateway and he deposits us smack-dab in the center of the action. Your senses are assailed from every angle. A riotous rainbow of colors blending turmeric and mirchi with bandhinis and patolas, the clamor of people calling out their wares, and smells of incense and spices emanate from the stalls, which are practically on top of each other. While you are busy looking down to make sure you don’t step in cow-doo, you are danger of being run over by two- and three-wheeled maniacs who think you are are wearing your invisible cloak. I stop to roll up the hem of my jeans while my daughter rolls her eyes. I will roll them down when I am on Project Runway, I promise her. She rolls her eyes so much, one day they will reside permanently in the occipital section of her brain.

You can find everything here - from cosmetics to underwear, socks to suitcases, jewelry - both real and fake, fruit, vegetables and all kinds of lentils and spices. But we are here to buy pooja stuff or samaagri as it is called. True to my anal nature, I had brought a printed list of items we needed to buy. In English. About as useful as my Google Map of the city. The man had already started rattling off stuff we would need. Varmala. Sampoot. Kalash. Chaab. Dhoop. Antarpat. Naadachadi. Never having done a pooja (or one lasting more than a minute) I had no clue what he was talking about. To avoid looking dumb, and obviously failing miserably, we just asked him to give us one of everything. Sheeesh! What is all this stuff and who invented all the rituals for it anyway? What the hell does tal have to do with the gods? And why is it seven paan, but eleven supari? Fear of invoking evil spirits made us pick up the tab (and the super-heavy bag) without a whimper.

It was a family-run enterprise. The genteel, old patriarch advised, explained and convinced us what was necessary and in an honest fashion telling us what not to buy. The son ran around getting the stuff down from the shelves, while a small chokra-boy continuously packed the items.

We left after Old Man Saraiya gave my lawyer-daughter a blessing and asked her to come and visit him in a few years ... as a judge. We left with a huge canvas theli of stuff ... and a lump in our throats.


Saraiya Stores, Manek Chowk, Fuwara, Ahmedabad 380001. Tel: 79 2214 6531

Wedding Vignettes: Shopophobia

There is a reason why the word Shopophobia does not exist in the OED. If there were people who had a fear of shopping, there would be a word. A bit ridiculous to invent a word for one person. Moi.

Seriously, I would rather have a colonoscopy while a dentist was giving me a root canal. Without anesthesia. Yes. I dread shopping that much. That’s not entirely true. I pretty much hate it as well. So when I was expected to go wedding shopping, you will understand the palpitations and the cold sweat. And that too, to go to India for it. Shoot me now. Spoiler alert! I survived, as can be attested by the date of this article.

Apart from the blue funk, I was the not your 'go-to' person to accompany anyone shopping, least of all my daughter for something so important (unless it was as a coolie to carry their bags). I had not the faintest clue where to begin. Couldn’t tell the difference between a chiffon and a georgette, a lengha from a ghagra, a banarasi from a kanjeevaram, a kundan from a polki. Enamel was what was found on your teeth and not on a minakari necklace.

So there we were, stress-begotten OCIs in hand, ready to take on this gargantuan task.
Alone. For two and a half weeks we maneuvered our way through a maze of recommended designers and shops, in a complex system of ordering invitations, choosing saris, picking up gifts, finding mithai boxes, selecting jewelry, giving measurements to tailors, delivering samples and going to pick stuff up, running from pillar to post and back again - because nothing was ready on time.

The invitations were first. We finished that on Khadilkar Marg in Bombay. A street lined with shops devoted to cards and anything remotely related to it. It took us the whole morning and afternoon, and we left after giving half the deposit and receiving assurances that they would stay on top of the order and stay in touch regularly. Yes, and I also believed the taxi driver when he said he knew where to go and the tailor when he said he had the right measurements.

Even before we left, we had heard horror stories about misspellings and delays, irregular edges and smelly cards ... wrong sizes, wrong fonts, wrong paper. As tempted as we were to go to a gora shop in South Coast Plaza, we realized, apart from the cost, our invitations involved (way) too much fandagiri. We had (way) too many different inserts and (way) too many permutations as regards the invitations, the envelopes, the RSVPs cards etc. Sangeet. Mehndi. Garba. Wedding. Two receptions. And this was supposed to be a low-key wedding. Hah! (The breakfasts, the lunches, the picnic, the pithi, and the high teas were considered non-invitation items.)

There is a happy ending to the Invitation Card story. We have them. They look beautiful.  They did smell, but leaving them in my son’s room, spreadeagled on his bed, with the windows open for a week solved that problem. (What was that scream I just heard?) It was painful calling the card guys every night, with them not answering the phone, not replying our emails (who in their right mind uses the excuse “I didn’t get the email” these days? They seriously don’t know how the internet works?) Give them five corrections to do, they would randomly choose three of them.

I don’t know much more about how traumatic everything else was, because the Invitation Task had been delegated to my husband and my daughter. Which was the only reason why I survived. Or rather, the card guys did.