The first time I wore a sari in India

Usually, I don't feel comfortable wearing a sari, so I don't. It makes me feel self-counscious and I am always afraid some disaster will happen while I'm wearing it. I did after all manage to tear a salwar kamiz on the way to the family temple, angering my MIL and having lots of strangers laugh a my face... until someone finally told me there was a slight problem... so imagine what could happen with a sari !

But last time we went to India, I took my plain cotton handloom sari with me, and I was overjoyed to find a matching stretchy blouse to go with it. Nodoby can tear a stretchy blouse, right ? I wanted to dress up for the family. As it happened we were there for an important family wedding and nobody took special interest in me (apart from telling me off for things my husband did or didn't do, and asking me to bless the bride and groom once the marriage hall was almost empty).... For the wedding I wore two salwar outfits I'd bought in France.

Then we went on a trip and I used the sari as a blanket for the baby in the car. Suddenly hubby decides to stop in Trichy. Usually foreigners are not allowed to see the god in that temple, but someone told hubby if I wore a saree and jasmin flowers and looked hindu, then they may let me in. So I had to struggle alone in the bathroom to wrap myself in a blanket-sari while hubby and his nephew were doing something... What an ordeal. But it gave me the right to queue 3 hours to have a glimpse of the god and give him lotus flowers and tulsi (and then have the tulsi shoved back in my face by a grudging priest)...

Anyways. Hubby took pictures of me outside the temple. My MIL said I had a village sari but she liked my stretchy blouse. My Tamil girlfriends later told me I wrapped the sari in grandmother style. No wonder they let me in as a local in the temple lol... and our last day in India, my MIL gave me a gorgeous purple sari.

Then recently someone told me in India if a woman doesn't look her best, people think she is unhappy in marriage. Oh dear.

What does your wedding say about you

There was a piece in the Hindu monday entitled "Forget-me-Knots" describing "second generation Indian-American weddings".

When I read blogs of other western women married to Indian men, most of the time there are colourful descriptions of the wedding and beautiful pictures of the bride looking gorgeous in a sari and the groom in an embroidered suit.

When we decided to live together, hubby was living in India and I was in Europe. My main preoccupation was figuring out if I could relocate to India or not. With two teenage kids from a previous marriage, it was going to be difficult. Everybody around me was insisting on negative issues, especially people who'd never set foot in India. I discovered unknown aspects of family, colleagues and friends. People I had always seen as open minded and sophisticated blurted out xenophobic comments. In the end it was my gynecologist who convinced me, saying "don't fling it all and traumatize your kids for a sexual pulsion". That was not exactly romantic, but I figured she knew what she was talking about.

So the next step was taking hubby to Europe. I started researching immigration rules, and found out it was going to be a tough journey. I read many stories of people getting married abroad and then the wedding transcription in French law taking months, preventing the spouse to ask for a visa. That's why we decided to get married in France. Our goal was to live together, not to get married.

We ended up having a simple registrar wedding at the town council, the white bride in a simple beige wollen dress and the black groom in a chocolate cotton suit. We exchanged gold rings and a kiss in front of a dozen people, and went on to a nextdoor bar for champagne and light snacks. Hubby was slightly upset, as I'd tried to choose an auspicious Hindu day, but it was a Friday, he is vegetarian on Fridays, and he believes everything you start on that day you will do again. Then we left for a honeymoon in the country where the hills are alive with the sound of music, and hubby was jealous of SRK - but that's another story. (I managed to book a Yash Raj enchanted journey honeymoon trip, on famous film locations !)

Sometimes I wish we had done a traditional wedding in India, but I don't think I could have coped. This was the wedding of a secular, shy and austere couple.