The Big Fat Lie Of My Big Fat Indian Wedding

My wedding and marriage, like any Indian girl's wedding and marriage, were constant topics of discussion. At 10, I'd get giddy and excited at every mention of it; at 15, I'd blush. By the time I was 20, I had taken to yawning. It wasn't that I was no longer excited about the idea of finding a life partner. I had simply realized by then that everything an Indian girl is promised about her wedding and consequent marriage is a big fat lie.

When at 17 I'd wanted to get my hair colored - and this was before hair coloring was deemed fashionable - my father had stared at me like I'd just announced three secret children. When I demanded to know why they were so against the concept, my father's response had been simple: "Well, who's going to marry you then?" Hair coloring, back then, just wasn't a respectable thing to do.

"Don't worry sweetie," my mother had reassured me. "You can get your hair colored when you're married."

This was the typical Indian parent way of dealing with any demands of independence made by daughters. We were promised freedom in the form of marriage.

We were told that once married, we could travel to exotic locales with our husbands, go to parties that stretched beyond the 8 p.m. curfew, and if our husbands were the adventurous sort, maybe even get piercings and tattoos.

With hope eternal, what they neglected to tell us was that this was the best-case scenario. What we'd get in the marriage lotto if we were lucky and our husbands "let us" be ourselves. In reality, however, it was more likely that we'd be giving up not just our names, but our identities, our dreams, and our fantasies.