Nigel’s mother wants you to wear the lily-white wedding gown with a tiara headpiece and a thin gauzy veil. She is a Catholic Brahmin matriarch. Your mother, a Hindu Brahmin matriarch, wants you to wear a red and yellow Kanjeevaram silk saree with a shiny zari border in paisley design.

You wear a cream raw silk saree with a golden border. With risqué flair, you tie it below your navel.

Nigel’s mother wants you to wear her own mother’s short 24-carat gold chain with a simple gold cross. The cross is the size of a little finger that would rest comfortably in the dip between your collarbone. Your mother wants you to wear a lengthy 22-carat double strand wedding necklace made of gold, and black onyx beads. She wants the groom to clasp it around the bride’s neck in front of the altar.

You wear a pearl necklace, costume jewelry, from the Met Museum shop.

Nigel’s mother wants you to wear plain gold stud earrings, two gold bangles on the right wrist and a jeweled watch on the left. Your mother wants you to wear jhumkas made of gold and rubies to dangle from your earlobes like mini chandeliers. She wants your forearms to be filled with the happy bangling of green glass and gold bracelets engraved with images of Goddess Lakshmi.

You wear pearl ear drops, a graduation gift from your college roommate’s mother, and a rice pearl bracelet given to you by Nigel for Valentine’s Day.

Nigel’s mother wants you to wear your long hair shorter and straightened; your mother wants you to wear a braid or a voluminous bun woven with fresh jasmine.

You wear your curly hair half up-half down held together with a pearly rainbow hair comb.

Nigel’s mother doesn’t want you to wear the traditional symbol of Hindu marriage on your forehead. Your mother, of course, wants your forehead adorned with a traditional circle of bright red kumkum powder.

You wear a dainty stick-on bindi-flame hoping it would ignite the energy of your third eye and cause you to levitate beyond the chaos of a Catholic groom-Hindu bride wedding, and strong mothers who hail from India.

You and Nigel stood in front of an altar with a towering crucifix at Immaculate Conception Church. It was a block and a half away from the exit ramp off of the roaring turnpike. Twenty-two wedding guests were in attendance. Twenty-one were from Nigel’s family and one was from yours: your brother-in-law who walked you down the aisle.

 

Brunda Moka-Dias works as an educator and has studied writing in a few workshops including at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival. She is an emerging writer and her first story will be published in Image journal.