The Henna Wars Read online

  “Why are Bengali relationships so complicated?”

  “Something I ask myself every single day,” I mumble. It comes off a little more bitter than I want it to. I’ve laced it with all of the resentment I’m feeling for Ammu and Abbu. After all, it’s not just Bengali relationships that are complicated, is it? It’s this weird, suffocating culture that tells us exactly who or what we should be. That leaves no room to be anything else.

  “Apujan.” Before I know it, Priti is prying the tube of henna out of my fingers. There is a glob of henna on her hand where it’s definitely not meant to be, but I can barely see it through the sudden glaze of tears in front of my eyes.

  “Sorry.” I sniff, rubbing my eyes and willing the tears to disappear into nothingness.

  “I get it,” Priti offers kindly.

  She doesn’t get it at all, and I don’t have the heart to tell her that. I lean over to the box of tissues sitting on the bedside table and pluck one out. I wipe at her hands softly, dabbing so that only the glob of henna and any smudged parts are wiped away while the rest of the design remains untarnished.

  “We don’t have to keep—”

  “I want to.” I pick up the henna tube again. We both settle into the bed. There is something calming about the henna, something familiar and real and solid. It makes me forget about everything else, at least for a few minutes.

  Though Priti’s hand still trembles as I work away, I manage to finish her palm without any more incidents. I come away with a small smile on my face as Priti examines her hennaed hand, holding it up in front of her with some admiration.

  “You know what?” she says. “You’ve definitely gotten better at this.”

  “I know.” My smile widens. Priti nudges me with her non-hennaed hand.

  “Don’t get too cocky now.”

  “Okay, well. The other hand.” I hold out my hand with the henna tube, waiting for her to stretch her other palm out to me.

  She groans. “Can we take a break? I need to stretch my legs.” She’s taking a million photos of her outstretched hand, no doubt to put up on her Instagram. That gives me a slight jolt of happiness—that my handiwork has been deemed Instagrammable by my little sister, aka my second worst critic—but it doesn’t distract me from my work.

  “Priti, the wedding is in a few days. If I don’t get it done now, the color won’t set properly. You know that.”

  “Fine, fine, fine,” she huffs. “But don’t get mad if I can’t sit still.”

  I will get mad. She knows that and so do I. But we begin on her right hand anyway.

  The wedding hall is gorgeous. It’s the first wedding I’ve been to outside of Bangladesh, and I didn’t know what to expect. Summer weddings in Bangladesh are one of two things—beautiful, expensive and luxurious to the point where you don’t even realize you’re in a country where it’s 104 degrees out, or so hot that the thought of dressing up in your nice clothes and putting on a full face of makeup makes you want to commit some serious atrocities.

  And they’re abundant. During one summer visit to Nanu’s house, we had to go to fifteen different weddings. Half the time we didn’t even know the names of the people getting married, much less how they were related to us.

  Stepping into this wedding hall feels a little like stepping into those Bangladeshi summers. There are big, circular tables filling the entire hall, each with a small vase of red and white flowers laced together. Fairy lights twinkle everywhere, winking on and off every few seconds.

  “Hani Khala and Raza Khalu went all out,” Priti whispers as we step inside the hall. I have to agree. It makes sense; there’s no way they would have their sole daughter’s wedding on a budget.

  I only have a moment to wonder where everybody is before Priti and I are ushered into a back room by a woman in a black and white salwar kameez who looks like she means business.

  “Sunny Apu!” Priti cries as we step inside. Because there she is, made up all beautiful like a bride in a traditional red lahenga with a pattern of gold gilded on the edges. I feel a prick of something bubbling up inside of me, some kind of anxiety that I hadn’t expected, and I bite my lip to keep it at bay.

  “You two look so lovely!” Khala says from behind Sunny Apu. “Absolutely stunning, don’t they?”

  Sunny Apu smiles nervously, nodding at the two of us, but she doesn’t say anything. She looks nervous—scared, even. Priti casts a glance over at me, as if to check if I’ve noticed Sunny Apu’s nervousness too.

  “All the bridesmaids are gathering up in the other room.” Hani Khala nods at the door past the dressing table. “They’re almost ready to go, I think.”

  Priti and I hurry toward it, giving a fleeting smile to Sunny Apu before slipping inside.

  I recognize almost nobody in this room, though they’re all dressed like Priti and me. It takes me a moment to snap out of the dissonance of entering a room where everybody is dressed the same and to politely murmur a hello.

  “They must be Sunny Apu’s friends, right?” Priti asks. “And her cousins?”

  I nod, my eyes roaming over the lot of them as subtly as possible. There are two girls huddled in one corner of the room who are both white and, I’m pretty sure, Irish. The pink and gold salwar kameez that Hani Khala sent over to all of us looks oddly out of place on them.

  “It washes them out,” Priti says, as if reading my thoughts. I shoot her a glare to shut up. The room is small enough that they can hear her, even if she whispers.

  In the other corner, there’s a group of four girls. Two of them share features with Sunny Apu, but the other two don’t look Bangladeshi at all.

  “I think I recognize her,” I whisper to Priti as low as I can. “The tall girl with the curly—don’t look so obviously!” I have to cut myself off because Priti has abandoned any notion of subtlety and is staring directly at the group of girls. It’s a good thing they’re too deeply involved in their conversation to pay attention to us.

  “She’s pretty,” Priti says. “I don’t think I’ve seen her before though.”

  I’m trying to place her. From school? No, she looks far older than me. She must be at least the same age as Sunny Apu. Maybe I saw her at a Desi party? But she’s not Desi, or at least she doesn’t look it.

  “I know I’ve seen her somewhere,” I whisper to Priti, trying to stare at the girl as subtly as possible to find something that will give away how I recognize her. “But I can’t remember where.”

  We have no more time to mull it over because a moment later, the door to the room is flung open again and the woman in black and white is giving us instructions about how to properly enter the wedding hall.

  “Is that all we do as bridesmaids?” Priti whispers to me as she’s handed a small bunch of red and white flowers. “Walk?”

  I shrug. “I guess so.”

  Weddings in Bangladesh didn’t have any of this bridesmaids business—not that we would have been a part of it if they did, considering how young we were and how we barely knew the people getting married.

  I link my hand through Priti’s.

  She makes a face and says, “Did you put on deodorant before leaving the house?”

  I hit her over the head with my bouquet, secretly hoping one of the thorns from the red roses gives her a little prick. Alas, no luck, because she ducks and giggles. The woman in black and white gives us a scathing look from the front of the line and I wonder if you can be thrown out of a wedding when you’re a bridesmaid.

  Better not risk it, I think to myself, and I elbow Priti to behave.

  “I’m not having bridesmaids at my wedding,” Priti says, once the wedding procession is over and we’ve done our bit as good bridesmaids and … well, walked into the wedding hall with our arms linked together. It was a bit of a letdown, though I suppose Priti and I shouldn’t have expected anything else.

  “Nobody could even see the henna on our hands,” Priti says. “Because of these annoying flowers.”

  “Shh. You’re going to get
us into trouble again,” I whisper.

  She huffs, slides back in her chair and crosses her arms together. We managed to find two seats together at a table where we recognize absolutely nobody. I look around, trying to locate Ammu and Abbu, but there are so many people milling about that it’s almost impossible.

  “Maybe we should get up and find them?” Priti asks. It’s kind of the last thing I want to do. I’m weirdly happy to be separated from them for once, and to not have our conversation hanging over our heads like a dark, unspoken cloud.

  “No, we’re here, we might as well stay put.” I settle into my chair, setting my beaded gold clutch on the table beside me.

  “Good idea, we probably wouldn’t find seats together again anyway. They’re about to serve the food.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “I have a nose for these things.”

  I catch a glimpse of Sunny Apu on stage, with her new husband sitting at her side. They’re both smiling.

  “What was that in the backroom?” I ask Priti.

  “What?”

  I duck my head close to her, aware that the Auntie who is sitting in front of us just turned to give us an interested look. I immediately peg her as the gossiping type.

  “You know, how Sunny Apu looked … kind of … I don’t know, panicky.”

  “She’s about to be married, of course she’s panicky. It’s a lifelong commitment.” Priti’s voice is louder than I’m comfortable with. The Auntie in front of us isn’t looking anymore, but she’s edged closer to us somehow. I have a feeling she’s straining to listen.

  “I know people do get panicky. I know why. But I just didn’t think she would be.” I lower my voice further.

  Priti doesn’t get the hint. She shrugs and says, “It’s normal. Just because she already knew Bhaiya—sorry, Dulabhai—before the wedding doesn’t mean she wouldn’t be nervous.”

  Except, that’s exactly what I thought would be the case. She’d known him for so long, since they were kids. If you could know someone for that long and still get nervous at the wedding, what hope did the rest of us have?

  I try not to let my dejection show on my face. She looks happy now, I think, looking up at the stage. She looks happier than happy. She looks exuberant. It brings out a kind of beauty that I hadn’t seen in the back room, a beauty that has nothing to do with her red and gold dress or the intricate henna pattern weaving its way up the length of her arm, or with the heavy set makeup that makes her skin twice as pale as normal and her red lips as dark and voluminous as Angelina Jolie’s. It’s more like a spark of happiness inside of her that’s now shining through on the outside. I wonder if Dulabhai can see it too. I think he must, from the way he looks at her.

  When I look away, I catch a glimpse of the girl from the back room, the one with the curly hair. She’s speaking with someone she bears a striking resemblance to.

  I frown, realization dawning on me.

  It wasn’t her that I recognized, but this other girl with the same sort of curly hair and dark brown skin. I went to primary school with her a few years back. As soon as I catch a glimpse of her, that part of my life suddenly floods back.

  She turns her head all of a sudden, like she can sense someone watching. She catches my eye, and for a moment it’s just the two us taking each other in from across the wedding hall. If I didn’t know better I would call this my own Bollywood moment.

  But I do know better, so I turn away quickly, before our gaze becomes something longer than I can explain away.

  3

  MY ABSOLUTE FAVORITE PART OF THE WEDDING DISTRACTS me from all of my worries. It even perks Priti up from her bridesmaid melancholy. Food!

  For starters, the waiters bring out kebabs and sticks of chicken shashlick with green and red fried peppers stuck between the pieces of chicken. I start piling food onto my plate before the waiter has even set everything down. The Auntie sitting opposite us looks at me fearfully, like she didn’t think Priti and I could be so ravenous in our hunger. I smile back at her, hoping that she’s not too closely related to Sunny Apu.

  I’m about to start eating when Priti stops me with a tap on my shoulder.

  “You can’t eat with your hands,” she says with a frown.

  “Why not?” But I realize the answer as I look around and notice that everybody else has picked up the cutlery next to their plates and is politely cutting into their kebabs. Like we’re Westerners and not Bengalis.

  “I can’t believe we’re supposed to eat like white people even at a Bengali wedding,” I complain in a whisper.

  Priti rolls her eyes, but says nothing, probably hoping I’ll get fed up with complaining and just shut up. I have more to say, but I’m far too hungry, and the Auntie at our table has piled so much food onto her plate already that I’m afraid I won’t get to seconds unless I start stuffing my face right now.

  I reach out for my knife and fork, but knock them over in my hurry to get to the food. They make a loud clanking noise on the way down. I catch her looking over out of the corner of her eyes, and my cheeks heat up with embarrassment. Does she remember me?

  “This is what happens when we give in to Western traditions,” I whisper to Priti before ducking underneath the table. Grabbing hold of the knife and fork, I try to stand, but due to the pencil heels I never wear, I underestimate my height and bump into the table with a loud bang.

  “You’re making such a scene!” Priti says in a delighted way. Like she couldn’t have asked for anything better.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” I mumble. Priti’s head appears under the table, and she extends an arm adorned with clinking gold churis. I take it, muttering, “shit, shit, shit,” all the way up because my head is throbbing. This is definitely not what I need before sitting down to a lovely wedding dinner.

  The Auntie opposite us gives me a filthy look as I take my seat, and I feel my face heat up all over again as I realize she must have heard me curse.

  “Siss!” I cry this time. “The floor of this wedding hall is so gross, Auntie! You wouldn’t believe it.”

  She doesn’t look like she does believe me but I give her a smile nonetheless. Priti is in a fit of giggles beside me. I shoot her a grin before enthusiastically digging into my kebab. All of the embarrassment, and the Auntie’s judgment, will be worth it if the kebab is good.

  “Mmmmmm,” says Priti, when she has finally gotten over her giggling fit for long enough to put some food into her mouth. I’m too busy piling more kebabs onto my plate to reply.

  “You know there’s a main course, right?” Priti grins after I’ve eaten my fourth kebab.

  “Will the main course have these kebabs though, huh?” I’m feeling pretty glad that we managed to find seats separate from Ammu and Abbu.

  “I wonder what the main course will be?” I ask Priti. I’m hoping for biryani. That one’s easy enough to eat with cutlery. Priti rolls her eyes. As if she’s not thinking the exact same thing as me.

  We talked about this wedding for ages. The whole summer, really. It’s the first wedding we’ve attended where we actually play a role—but that wasn’t the part we were excited about. We were far more excited about what the cuisine at a Bengali wedding set in Ireland could be like.

  “They won’t have the typical Bengali wedding dishes, right?” Priti had asked one summer day—a day where the sun had decided to grace us with its presence and we were both lounging in our backyard, me with a book in hand and Priti with one earbud in her ear and one dangling down her neck.

  “What? You don’t like korma and polau?” I asked.

  She frowned. “They’re just a bit boring, aren’t they?”

  I rolled my eyes. Priti never complained about them being too boring when we were in the midst of wedding season in Bangladesh.

  Still, one thing was clear from the get-go—for us, this wedding is all about the food.

  I can barely contain my excitement when the waiter brings around the main course: Platters full of biryani that smell like h
eaven on a plate. Priti gives me a look that says don’t grab the biryani dish before the rest of the table have taken some, presumably because the Auntie opposite us is eyeing the biryani with even more fervor than me. I think this is a little unfair. The Auntie is an adult and can have as much biryani as she wants any old day. I can only have it when Ammu deems it enough of an occasion to cook us some.

  Priti and I patiently wait, watching the waiter bring out more and more dishes—a bowl of steaming lamb curry, plates of naan, a small bowl of mung daal, and a plate of chicken tikka. While the Auntie spoons biryani onto her plate I grab the naan, tossing one to Priti and another onto my plate.

  “Am I supposed to eat this with a fork and knife too?” I grumble under my breath, tearing at the bread with my fingers and following it with a forkful of lamb curry. It’s the most unsatisfactory way of eating I’ve ever been subjected to. It’s cruel, really, to have a Bengali wedding full of Bengalis but expect them to eat in a totally non-Bengali way. I’m almost missing the weddings in Bangladesh; at least there we were free to eat with our fingers, even if it was unbearably hot and the food was almost always korma and polau.

  After our plates are hoisted away, all the guests begin to rise. The bride and groom have obviously finished their dinner and are sitting up on the stage at the front of the hall. They sit on a settee lined with gold and silver that looks more like a throne than commonplace furniture. Sunny Apu looks a little bit like a princess sitting on it in her red and gold dress, her urna draped over her head almost casually. I know from experience that it has probably been pinned into place by a stylist to maintain that casual look.

  What really makes her look like a Rajkumari, though, is the jewelry she’s draped with. There are heavy gold bangles clinking on each of her hennaed wrists and a gold chain hanging from her neck, settled gently over her dress, but the bit I love most is the golden chain that clasps around her nose and stretches all the way to her ears. It seems heavy, but somehow it works on Sunny Apu. She pulls it off almost effortlessly.