Part two in a series.

The thing that irks me most about this week is the day we all celebrate love. Why does there need to be a day to celebrate the most wonderful feeling in the world, when really, it should be celebrated every day? I am not just saying this because I am hopelessly single. I promise. But on a serious note, I think that if there is a day to celebrate love, it should be your wedding day. For a day so special, there obviously needs to be preparation, and just in case you are crazy enough to have a wedding (or two), both Indian, that just means shopping…lots and lots of shopping.

The Clothes:

A typical list of wedding outfits usually starts with the bride and the gown. In a Bengali wedding, the equivalent is the saree, called Benarasi. The name originates from the city Benaras, the city where the saree used to be designed. Back in the day, only this city and its skilled workers held the monopoly and the technical know-how to design this saree. Usually, the fabric is silk, with intricate work by gold or silver threads, and they are really, really, heavy.  Back in the day, my dad went to buy the Benarasi for his sister (M’s mother) from Benaras. However, now, similarly beautiful designs are available in Kolkata and specifically, Gariahat, or as I like to call it, the saree central. Obviously, hunting down the perfect Benarasi was a challenge. We probably had to look through stacks and stacks of red silk sarees with beautiful work, one more gorgeous than the other. However, the minute they were draped around M, it was like they lost their sheen, or rather, the way I see it, the sarees fell short of our expectations. Finally, we decided to venture out of the box and ditch red altogether. At last, we stumbled upon the store that my mother had bought her Benarasi from. You should probably be saying at this point, “Stupid Sayantan, why didn’t you go there first?” The answer to this would be, “What’s the fun in that?” I just wanted to go through hundreds of sarees in ten different stores before looking at the obvious choice. We had found it. Yet, the Benarasi, little did I know, was only the beginning, because then there were three more sarees we would need to buy for the bride.

The first of these was for the haldi, a ceremony held on the morning of the wedding to prepare the bride for the big day. Usually this involves giving the bride a “facial” of sorts with turmeric, and the saree thus needs to have yellow in it. This time, I wasn’t such a fool, and we high tailed it to the store from which my mother had bought her own saree for the haldi. The second saree was for the day after the wedding, and this too needed to be traditional. We decided on another typical Bengali handiwork, the tashar, and for this, we decided to go north. No, I don’t mean to Kashmir, just northern Kolkata. Finally, because of all of this traditional sarees, we were more than a little annoyed with the lack of variety, so for the final saree we wanted to be nontraditional, non-Bengali, and what is more non-Bengali or non-traditional than Bollywood? We decided to end our long shopping spree in a little store on Park Street (named by the British and oh-so-famous for its Anglo-Indian heritage) and bought a Bollywood inspired saree.

Little did I know that when the bride’s shopping was done, we were only done with the most interesting aspect of the shopping. We still had to buy another thirty or so sarees for every relative we had, and let me just tell you that the Deb family is not small. Let’s just say my grandfather had ten other siblings. I will spare you of all of the details of this part of the shopping, a luxury I did not have.

The Food:

Someone (my father…cough), must have been crazy enough to think that we could pull off feeding three hundred people for six meals without catering. In the end, we didn’t cook everything, but we did have to buy all of the groceries. This probably would have been a lot easier if my mother and I hadn’t decided that every meal had to be unique. As Bengali wedding menus are more than complicated, a primary will be necessary before we actually get to the grocery shopping.

The night before the wedding was the night of the sangeet. Traditionally, this is when everyone in the family begins the celebration with song and dance. We had the same idea, but brought in a DJ and strobe lights, and a sound system that literally shook the ground. The menu for this night was Chinese, and it encompassed everything from Manchurian style cauliflower to Schezwan chicken, not to mention fried rice and appetizers. This meant a whole lot of shopping from Lake Market, an entire area of the city dedicated to the exotic ingredients of the world. There are very few ingredients that aren’t available there, but unlike a Shaw’s, they require searching for. And walking. Lots of walking.

The morning of the wedding was probably a little easier; we had a traditional Bengali breakfast of pooris (puffed bread) and a vegetable curry, and an even more traditional lunch which included the quintessential fish curry. (A little side note: we Bengalis need fish, in just about everything.) The wedding night, however, saw about five hundred people and one of the most elaborate menus I had encountered. It was a Mughlai themed dinner — meaning food derived from the Mughal era of India — presumably what Shah Jahan ate while giving orders to build the Taj Mahal. From the lamb Biryani, to chicken chanp (a rich oniony gravy), to goat handi (a rich cashewy curry) to the dal makhani (a rich lentil…yes everything is rich and spicy), the menu encompassed every form of protein and vegetable available. Just the sheer amount of spiced scared me; the back of our pick-up truck was literally filled with sacks of spices before the event. Let me just tell you that all of our preperation was worth it.

The day after the wedding was just as elaborate. After the wedding, to welcome the Ramans to the family, we decided on a more Southern-Indian inspired breakfast. This was followed by two different kinds of preparations of fish (one steamed, the other a curry) for lunch. If you are wondering how we managed to eat all of this, well, we did, and it was delicious.

Although with clothing and food, our shopping had only just begun, I have run out of space for the week. But never fear! Next week takes us to the sultry summer days of August, where we met the Ramans for the first time. In the spirit of suspense, Namaste until then!

Sayantan Deb ‘14 (sayantandeb@college) doesn’t want to shop for quite a while now. That is a lie. He will be hitting Urban’s bargain basement this weekend.