It was true. Granted, we had not seen him for years, but he had visited Mom throughout her illness. Even Dad had tolerated him because it was clear that whatever she believed or did not believe, he brought Mom comfort.
“But he’s Iyengar, you see,” Ragini Aunty said. “Sundaraman is Iyer. Of course it’s up to you, but it’s better if Sundaraman does the wedding.”
It clearly meant a lot to her, and what did we care about priests?
“Sure,” Vinnie said.
“What is your family?” Ragini Aunty asked, her face shining with trust and anticipation.
“We’re ath—” Dad stopped short as I stomped without mercy on his foot.
“Arya Samaj,” I said, glad I remembered the name. “We’re, um… Arya Samaji.” It was a semitruth—my Beeji had been a leading light of the New England Arya Samaj scene when she lived here. I smiled brightly before continuing. “There was a lady priest my grandmother liked very much, Pandita Gayatri Vohra, but we’ve lost touch with her.”
Beeji would have preferred that the Pandita visit with Mom too, but since Gayatri Ji had a full-time job as well as her other priestly duties, we’d had to turn to Krishna Ji instead.
Meanwhile Ragini Aunty was looking rather stunned. Too late I realized that Arya Samaj was scandalously liberal, by their lights.
But at least I had prevented Dad from blurting out the even more shocking truth—that after Mom passed, Dad, Vinnie, and I had been nothing but your simple garden-variety Massachusetts atheists.
“Well, you could get Krishna Ji to be your family priest, even though he’s Iyengar, and Sundaraman could be ours,” Ragini Aunty said. Evidently even Krishna Ji, the Iyengar, was better than a Punjabi lady priest.
“How many priests does it take to marry two people?” Dad said. “Let’s just go with your guy!”
“How many…?” Ragini Aunty said. “Oh, that’s funny, Vinod! How many priests! Your father is a real jokester, Yashasvini!”
Thank heavens Ragini Aunty took everything in such good humor! Vinnie probably looked okay to everyone else, but she was inwardly cringing, I was sure.
“I’ll go help Uncle,” she said. In the time we’d been talking, Mr. Iyer had made tea for everyone and was carrying in a tray of snacks that looked bigger than him. What a sweetheart! I hoped he had brought up Manish to be as caring as he was.
“We’re going to do what Vinnie likes, Mom,” Manish said. “She doesn’t like over-the-top movie set decorations.”
“Or their prices,” Dad mumbled into his tea. I hoped I was the only one who had heard him.
“Do you have pictures of Mohini’s wedding, Aunty?” I asked.
“Yes, yes, of course!” Ragini Aunty said. “Would you like to see?”
“No,” said Manish, Mr. Iyer, and Dad simultaneously.
“You stay with them, Yashasvini,” Ragini Aunty said. “I’ll show Padmini the pictures.”
“The clothes, the flowers, the food!” I said. My mind was blown, clearly. “The GOLD!”
I was still trying to digest the pictures that Ragini Aunty had shown me. Apparently it’s common practice for men to wear only a veshti and be bare-chested at Tamil weddings. So the guys with good bods looked amazing, and the ones without—not so much. “Manish would look great, though, right?”
“Right,” Vinnie said. “But we should look nice together for the pictures and how will that work if I’m in Masi’s gold lehenga and he’s wearing some minimalist Tamil outfit?”
“Maybe we could buy him an outfit,” I said.
“No, your clothes are supposed to come from your mother’s brother’s house,” Dad said with an air of authority. I had no idea if we could trust that piece of information, given that it came from Dad.
“Now you want to buy them presents,” I said to Dad.
Dad had the grace to look embarrassed. He had vetoed all my attempts to buy gifts for the Iyers, saying it smacked of tacit dowry demands. As if!
When Ragini Aunty presented gorgeous Kanjivaram saris to both Vinnie and me, and a thick gold bracelet to Dad, he felt awful. Luckily I had fitted in a trip to our local Indian jewelers—Kay Jee Jewelers—and traded in Mom’s broken and mismatched gold for a gold chain for Manish.
“Mom didn’t have a brother,” I said. “But Masi is Mom’s sister. That’s close enough, isn’t it? We should pick out his outfit! Then we can make sure that he’ll complement your lehenga. Okay, done! Let’s get his measurements and send them to Masi.”
Forty minutes of driving later we were at the mehendi lady’s salon. It was a tiny place with a small selection of gifts and jewelry up front and a proper beauty parlor at the back. I grabbed a handful of glittery stick-on bindi packets and a few stacks of glass bangles in vivid pinks, blues, and greens. No telling when we’d need some bright accessories.
Usha, the woman who ran the place, came out to talk business.
“We will have about forty people, I think,” I said. “Most of them will get henna, but they’ll be fine with simple patterns. Just a central motif and a few decorations on the fingers, maybe. How much will that cost?”
“I’ll do the bride’s henna myself,” Usha said. “And bring an assistant for everyone else. The bride’s henna will be five hundred dollars. And we’ll charge by the hour for the assistant.”
“How long does it take to do a pair of hands?” I asked.
“Pick a pattern and I’ll have her do it,” Usha said. “You can time her. Here’s the pattern book.”
It seemed like a good plan to try out the mehendi before we hired the service. I volunteered to be the test subject.
I picked a pattern from the design book. “This one.”
The assistant henna lady worked quickly. She had a plastic cone filled with dark green henna paste from which she squeezed a thin string of henna onto my palm. It was like watching someone ice a cake. In no time she had finished an intricate paisley pattern with a peacock feather beside it. It was amazing.
Vinnie looked at her clock. “Seven minutes
