Ed’s Note: This is the second of two articles by Summer Block Kumar, a writer living in Shanghai with her newlywed husband, Dev.

WHEN I ARRIVED in India in February for the first time—a half-Jewish California girl raised Episcopalian, wed to a half-Indian American raised in Alaska—I was replaying family history.

Dev’s father, Naresh, from Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh, wed his American mother Suzan in 1972 and brought his new bride to India, several decades before Indian weddings were the celebrity fashion they are today.

Now I was the new foreign bride, and the same aunts and uncles that welcomed Suzan thirty years ago were now clustered on the porch with rice and flowers to welcome us.

Dev’s family came from all over Jaipur and Aligarh to gather at the home of Dev’s eldest aunt, the family matriarch, Kanti Devi Saxena, known as Bua. Bua lives on the outskirts of Jaipur in a cool, comfortable bungalow beside a sari store, a side business for one of her many daughters-in-law. The low, sprawling house is fronted by a neat garden of fitful, scrubby grass. The backdrop was typical desert—a lot of open ground and open sky, anchored by a few stubborn trees.

Our Indian wedding wasn’t a single event but a blend of old and extemporized traditions done haphazardly and repeatedly over many days. Over a week of uncertain overtures, Dev and I did our own halting rotations as if around a sacred fire, encouraged by his family’s unfailing good humor and enthusiasm—from our first greeting with akshat (rice), tilak (a dot on the forehead), arati (a lighted candle), and marigold garlands to mandatory Motown serenades.

The Mehndi Ceremony

On my first day, we held my very informal mehndi ceremony, a casual knot of women and children hunched over Dev’s cousin Nidhi as she drew meticulous freehand peacocks and paisleys on my palms and forearms with henna. My favorite ritual, the application of cool henna paste is supposed to soothe the restless bride-to-be, while the obligatory time spent perfectly still with hands outstretched requires patience, calm—and indolence.

Aunt Manju also revealed to me that by tradition, an Indian bride isn’t expected to do any housework until her mehndi has faded, a sort of enforced honeymoon. It pays to let the paste soak in deep—the darker and longer-lasting the tint, the stronger the bond between bride and mother in-law. (Cousin Kalpna helped me cheat with the application of a little lemon juice.)

After my hands dried, it was time for another element of the traditional Hindu wedding, the dressing of the bride. The dressing quickly became a game of dress up, as the girls ran to find jewelry, bindhi, and make-up while the older women tucked and pinned my bright red sari into place. I accepted the striking sindhoor, vermilion powder that dusts the parting of a married woman’s hair, but later found it impossible to keep the stain from leaching onto everything I touched.

Exchanging Garlands

Cousin Anshul lead Dev into the bedroom for the exchanging of garlands. But no sooner did Dev and I finish a prescribed ritual than a new family member arrived and we were enjoined to do the whole thing again. And this time more slowly, to allow for photos. More than once we were stopped mid-garland-drop and reminded to ham it up. This was for posterity. In this smiling, piecemeal fashion we were blessed by the family, garlanded each other with flowers, and posed as bride and groom beside a dozen family members, my sindhoor leaving rosy kisses on the other women’s saris.

Greeting Elders

Like many other ritualized gestures, the respectful touching of an elder’s feet had to be done again and again, for the benefit of latecomers and cameramen, as well as to greet newly arrived elders.

“Touch [Uncle] Buredada’s feet.”

“Now touch his feet again—no, wait.” A fumble with the lens cap. “Okay, do it again.”

Then we took the show on the road, traveling in a caravan of cars and mopeds. We would all pull up together in front of a bungalow and everyone would pile out of their various vehicles and pour into another calm, cool concrete living room, crowding out the occupants and spilling out onto the balconies and rooftops. One of the young girls of the house would set out small bowls of snacks and cups of chai, or occasionally Pepsi (but never Coke). At every home, we posed for hundreds of formal family photos in every permutation of gender, age, and kinship, my smile growing noticeably dim and distracted as the warm, dusty afternoon gave way to the cool, still evening. But trouble was brewing.

Dancing to Bollywood Hits

That evening, while Dev ate with the men around the kitchen table in straight-backed chairs, the women lounged on cushions in the bedroom, sharing a leisurely dinner of poori and lentils. Then some troublemaker hinted that by Indian tradition the bride is required to dance in front of her new family. Another cousin and then another caught the thread, and soon it was all but heresy for a bride not to dance before her in-laws.

Megha dashed to the computer to cue up a jolting mix of Rajasthani folk music and hip-hop party anthem “Shake That Thing.” switching back and forth from one to the other mid-chord. Nidhi graciously agreed to teach me the dance moves I would need to impress the entire family, now piled on the bed and filling the doorway, eyeing me expectantly. I swayed and blushed and demurred like a proper bride, my movements small and restrained, until the older generation was finally compelled to leap up and show me how it was done. I danced through dozens of replays of the same two songs until I was slick and dizzy from the heat. At last, loose-limbed and reckless from exhaustion, I caught the careful hand positions, the sharp flick of the wrists and the coy expressions that capture the Bollywood dancing style. Then some new family members arrived and we did it all again.

The following day over lunch came the next challenge. It is traditional, cousin Megha translated for the group, for the bride to sing for her new family members. It was clear at this point that the family was just making up traditions. I demurred, explaining that I had a simply terrible singing voice, and anyway, what was I to sing? I didn’t know the words to any Hindi songs. The group was undeterred.

“Well, what should I sing?”

Megha voted for her favorite song, Bryan Adams’ “Summer of ‘69,” improbably lodged in her mind as the very paragon of rock. I was sorry to admit that I knew only the chorus and hardly that. After sifting through the corners of my mind for a song that wouldn’t offend, I lamely decided on “When a Man Loves a Woman,” a Karaoke Revolution favorite. I made my way haltingly for a single verse, my voice reedy and searching, before my new relatives decided they’d had enough bridal singing for one day.

“Anyway,” I suggested slyly, “Dev has the best voice in the family—make him sing.” •