The Desi Wedding (Part 3)

After much discussion you finally decide to invite 500 guests. Your little brother has invited all his sharabi uni mates and your sister is calling all her teeny bopper crew. You cast your mind back to the times when you and the boyz would gate crash wedding receptions just for a cheap night out. Now your’e hoping that your wedding isn’t mobbed by the current sharaboo’s of Southall town.

TV Repair Uncle calls to confirm that he won’t be working triple shift on your wedding day and is quite happy to do the video filming and the photography, yes… at the same time.. and all for a good discount price for his pavourite nephew. ‘Bollox’ you think to yourself, every time you’ve seen him he’s been sloshed and doesn’t even remember your name. To top it off, his son, Mintoo will be on cable duty.. ducking and diving past all those guests with the video wire. You hate each other with a passion and fear he might yank the wire out on purpose so you don’t have any memories of your wonderful desi tamashaa.

Your project manager,Asha (the fit desi that you all fancy) asks for two volunteers to work on an IT project in Dublin. Everyone else makes excuses but you offer your services just to get away from the tamashaa at home. To your surprise, Asha announces that she will join you as no one else is available. Your imagination goes into mirch massalla mode and you dream of spending many a night clubbing and drinking with her. You pray that the hotel mix up your rooms and you both end up sharing. ‘Calm down Kartar’ you think to yourself, ‘no need to get a Bulj-inder just yet’. Your mum rings and puts a spanner in the works, she wants you to take time off to pick 10 relatives from the airport on 10 different occasions. Asha is totally understanding and drops you from the Dublin project after 5 of the goray ALL suddenly volunteer to take your place. ‘Derty kuthay’ you think to yourself, you can see their eyes undressing your pyari zindagee Asha sweety, darleeng.




Your relatives start arriving from India and soon your house turns into western international market on a Sunday morning. Aunty’s gup shupping about suits and jewellery, Uncle’s knocking back neat pint pegs of Bagpiper Whiskey and little annoying cousins running around like blue arse flies. Being a typical desi, your dad orders wedding cards from his Chacha in Phagwara. Much to your disbelief, there are spelling mistakes galore. They mispell your name, instead of ‘Kartar Singh’ it reads ‘Kutta Singh’ and to top it off they even get your dad’s name wrong. ‘Don’t worry puttar’, your dad said says, ‘we can put tippex and correct them…. at least we saved 100 pounds’.



You think about having a nervous breakdown but decide to confide in old Jack once more. You get langered and ring up your mrs to be. You get all lovey duvvy and ask her to marry you in Gretna Green rather than going through all the headache of a desi wedding. She agrees with you but says that she would like to show off her wedding lengha. You suggest that you can both still get dressed up and get married at a registry office without 500 guests yapping in the background. She says that she needs at least 20 of her bhabhi’s to help her around as the lengha weighs a tonne. You put the phone down and contemplate whether she is indeed the woman you want to spend the rest of your life with. You go to the bathroom and try to rinse out the remaining drops of JD from the bottle. You look up at the mirror and decide to forget it all for a while.

Deep Mamma Ji calls you from Germany and asks if you want anything from there before he gets on his flight over. For the first time, you think to yourself, someone has actually asked what YOU want. Your Mamma Ji is probably the only non-piss head in your family and someone you hold great respect for. After your Nanna Ji died he virtually took over the running of your mum’s side of the family. He got you mum and all your massi’s married off and didn’t even think anything of it, he did it out of respect and khushi. You wonder why all that sense and sensibility of yester-year has dwindled away to make way for the current materialistic mayhem of today. For the first time you actually look forward to driving all the way up to Luton airport to collect your Deep Mammi Ji, who managed to get a superb deal on an EasyJet flight !

Harvey puts an email out asking the boyz if they can attend your stag… like mucchar to a flame.. they all reply confirming instantly. Larry and Jazz volunteer to be on desi daroo duty… Sunny and Jay take over as Stag social events organisers..whilst Harvey and Kuli assume video and camera duties….
Bal gets t shirts printed with ‘OYE CHUCK DE’ in bright orange letters on the front and ‘KARTAR DI BUND PATTI’ on the back. For added effect he managed to get a photo of you when you were 7 scanned on the front, with no front teeth and the worst basin bowl haircut you can imagine. You start having dreams of Sunny’s stag in Amsterdam, except this time it’s YOU experiencing a plethora of ha ha’s and hee hee’s and total unadulterated BESTI. Once again you reach out to your old friend the Jack & Danny whiskey bottle and realise that the stag weekend in Prague is gonna be worst time of your entire life ……….

( The Desi Wedding (Part 3) © OSD 2008 )