Invitation to a Feast

My youngest sister, Neha, married her high school sweetheart, Mohit, last December in a three-day-long celebration. More than an exchange of vows and rings, weddings in India are viewed as the union of two families and comprise a number of religious rituals witnessed by family deities, ancestors (in the form of photographs), extended family and friends. They are extravaganzas of colour, rich apparel, music and dancing at the centre of which is food!

The days leading up to an Indian wedding are the most enjoyable. More so when a daughter marries because, while a daughter-in-law is welcomed into the home when a son marries, a daughter leaves the home when she marries. The revelry is laced with a sense of finality: Once the celebrating is over, the bride – your baby daughter or, in my case, sister, who has grown up much too soon – must depart for her in-laws’ home, leaving behind an emptiness that will echo for a long time to come.

Celebrations for Neha’s wedding commenced almost a fortnight in advance. I didn’t want to miss a minute of it, so I moved into my mother’s house despite the fact that I live in the same city! Of course, organizing food became my responsibility, so the moment I arrived I went into a huddle with our Maharaj (the family cook, who has been with us for longer than I have lived). We had an important task before us: We had to plan a menu for the next 15 days in which four meals would be served daily, including a high tea, for anywhere between 20 and 50 people. Everything served would be traditional Gujarati food, and there could be no repetition of dishes.

As family began to trickle in from all over the world, the tempo began to build. The chores were divided: airport and train pickups, sorting accommodations, putting up decorations, trousseau and gift packing, planning ensembles, discussing clothes and admiring jewellery – and every day the family would congregate to practice dance for the Sangeet ceremony. 

The first day, the day of the mehndi and the Sangeet, dawned. Neha, dressed in a traditional ghagra choli (an ensemble consisting of a long skirt and a blouse), settled down for the application of mehndi, a ritual in which a bride’s hands and feet are decorated with intricate patterns in henna. The artists who were to apply Neha’s mehndi were some of the finest in the business and had been booked almost a year in advance! Neha basked in the attention as we all hovered around her. (We would have our own mehndi applied later that afternoon.)

Meanwhile, the kitchen was a hive of activity. It was wondrous to behold: Vessels bubbled, boiled and simmered with all manner of delicacies under a heady cloud of aromas as food was ladled into bowls and platters to lay the buffet for lunch. With the evening meal promising to be heavy (it was to be at a banquet hall), lunch was simple by wedding standards. Following the format of a Gujarati thali meal, lunch was served, buffet-style, in my mother’s silver thali service.

Khatta mug ni dal (whole mung beans cooked in a spicy yoghurt base) was accompanied by a simple kachi paki kobi (cabbage lightly sautéed with spices so it retained its crunch) and a more elaborately prepared sambhariyu shak (small eggplants and potatoes stuffed with spiced chickpea flour and coconut and slow-cooked in their own juices). Maharaj rolled out thin, hot rotis (griddle-baked flatbreads) to scoop up the vegetables with, and steamed rice was fluffed onto platters to finish the meal. Also on offer were a cucumber peanut and coconut salad, hot samosas (potato-stuffed crisp pastry triangles) and an assortment of pickles and deep-fried crunchies.  

Just as the last of the food was brought to the table, the groom arrived to put an auspicious dot on the bride’s hennaed hands. Once done, he fed Neha morsels of food – a very romantic (and brave!) gesture in front of a roomful of sighing women! By the time we were done, we were so stuffed that the mere contemplation of dressing up in finery seemed a monumental task. But the formal mehndi function awaited, and the mother of the groom and her entourage were expected, so we had to be there on time.

Mehndi is a women’s function, and refreshments that afternoon were in line with the one food Indian women love: chaats. Chaat literally means “to lick,” and the term describes a range of dishes that belong to the street-food section of the Indian cuisine. While they don’t necessarily have to be hot enough to blow off the top of your head (although that is an option), they are most often an irresistible combination of spicy, sour, sweet and salty. And the one chaat dish most of us women LOVE to distraction AND crave (especially when pregnant) is pani puri!

It is hard to describe pani puri. The whole dish is built around a single bite that must be dexterously assembled and in the mouth in seconds! First, the pani puri wallah takes a crisp hollow round puri the size of a tennis ball and cracks a small hole in it. He then fills the puri with a mixture of boiled potatoes, mung beans, chickpeas and tamarind-jaggery chutney (a deliciously thick sweet-and-sour sauce). He dunks the whole thing in ice-cold pani (a chili-spiked mint-and-rock-salt-flavoured watery liquid) and then drops it onto the leaf receptacle of the eager chaat lover. Said aficionado must get the whole thing in her mouth within seconds or end up with a soggy/broken puri and soiled clothes (something to be avoided when one is in wedding finery).

Once in the mouth, the puri cracks open with a satisfying crunch, releasing the icy pani and sweet chutney, which slide down the throat leaving behind a mouthful of spicy filling. Hard to resist and extremely hard to stop eating! There was lots on offer at the chaat counter, but I was happy to keep going back for more of the pani puri until it was time to have my henna applied. Once my henna was on, I would not be eating anything for a few hours but there would be lots to occupy us because the Sangeet ceremony would soon commence.

Cocktail and Sangeet parties are a chance for everyone to have fun before the serious bits of the wedding happen. There is a traditional dance competition between both sides. Since Neha – who had always been at the forefront of Sangeet ceremonies for other weddings – had decreed that her side be the best, they had practised for days! It turned out that they were and, of course, Neha, being Neha, stole the show with a stunning surprise performance. Professional musicians took over to play popular English and Hindi numbers, and everyone ate, drank and danced the night away.

Thankfully, our prescient mother had planned a late start the next day, and we were also thankfully not required to dress for the occasion since it was a haldi ceremony, a cleansing and beautifying ceremony in which married women of the family apply a turmeric paste on the bride. This is a form of blessing for the bride to have a long, happily married life, but turmeric, being endowed with cleansing properties, also leaves the bride glowing afterwards. In our family, it has become tradition that once the formal ceremony is done, the brothers join in. It usually ends up a free-for-all, with everyone getting a bit of the yellow stuff on them.

While all the excitement was playing out upstairs, the kitchen was at full throttle again. Since dinner was being catered today, Maharaj had lavished attention on lunch and the table was groaning. I had been looking forward to this meal ever since we had planned the menus because it contained some truly heirloom dishes from the family kitchen. One of these was vaal ni dal, a spicy dish made of field beans that had been my paternal grandmother’s specialty. Fansi nu shaak (green beans sautéed with spices), sukka batata nu shaak (dry spiced potatoes), rotis and dhokla and chutney (steamed savoury pancakes made of ground rice mixed with sour buttermilk and served with a fresh coriander chutney) completed the meal. Post-lunch, everyone dispersed to catch a nap where they could find a spot in order to be refreshed that evening.

No Indian wedding is complete without the blessings of a spiritual or divine element. With the haldi ritual complete, it was time to evoke the blessings of the gods with pujas (religious rituals). Once this was done, the Mausala arrived. Traditionally, the ensemble that the bride wears on her wedding day comes from her mama, or maternal uncle. Our uncle having passed away in his childhood, this is a tradition my nani (maternal grandmother) has upheld for all of us three sisters. The Mausala comes in a procession of ladies from the bride’s maternal side of the family to the beating of plates with spoons to ward of the evil eye.

As soon as the ceremonies were done, appetizers began to make the rounds: a selection of vegetarian kebabs, pickled mushrooms, potatoes and silken chunks of delicately spiced paneer (cottage cheese). Dinner today was a vegetarian North Indian meal because we were expecting a lot of guests. Dal makhani (slow-cooked black-eyed lentils), vegetable makhanwala (vegetables in a rich tomato and butter gravy), muttar paneer (cottage cheese and pea gravy), cumin-scented rice and naans, hot and fresh from the stone tandoor, made up a delicious meal that concluded in chilled rose-scented phirni (rice pudding) and kulfi falooda (Indian ice cream topped with noodles and syrup). Everyone opted for an early night, since the wedding was the next day.

The day of the wedding dawned bright and sunny, and the house was filled with bustle. Requirements for the ceremony were checked and rechecked and then transported to the wedding hall. The men kept their respective offspring busy as the ladies sequestered themselves in various rooms to get dressed in their wedding finery. Everyone cracked one-too-many silly jokes and laughed a little too loudly as they tried to forget that Neha would soon be leaving for her in-laws’ home. But it was a monumental feat to hold back tears when she finally emerged a few hours later.

All brides are beautiful on their wedding day, but my baby sister really was the MOST beautiful bride I have ever seen! As she bowed her head in front of the family gods before she left the house for the last time, I stayed back for a few moments to indulge in a little of the sentimentality I am legendary for, recalling all the stages of her life and wondering where the time had gone. But not for long because I had to get to the hall – I was supposed to welcome the groom!

An Indian wedding ceremony is performed by two family priests in the presence of family and friends. The bride and groom are seated in front of a holy fire (which is considered the sustainer of life). The priest recites various religious incantations from the holy scriptures, first to bless the podium in the Mandva Mahurat, followed by the Kanya Daan, in which the bride is given away by her parents. The wedding ceremony concludes with the couple circling the holy fire seven times. The groom puts a mangalsutra (a necklace that denotes a married woman) around the bride’s neck and sindhur (vermilion) in the parting of her hair.

While all of these life-altering rituals take place on the podium, the larger congregation is busy at the wedding banquet. If you have the good fortune of being invited to an Indian wedding feast, accept with alacrity. It will be a procession of flavours that you will never forget. It begins with the first sip of water proffered to an arriving guest, continues into as lavish a spread of food as the host can afford, winds through a delectable array of desserts and concludes with a selection of mukhwas (breath fresheners) and paan (betel leaves stuffed with spices and sweet ingredients to aid digestion and sweeten the breath). Indians have an innate sense of hospitality, stemming from the essential role that food plays at religious and social gatherings; nowhere is this more obvious than at our weddings.