The Inelegant Bride. (Part I)

It came in a crude, coarse envelope, sealed..not with glue, but with the hurried lick of a tongue. The saliva had dried to leave pale streams of a salty black along the border. It was a red card. Red and tiny. With a funny loop of silver threads pinned on the corner. Somewhere from the middle, laughed letters written in epileptic strokes, using a cheap sparkle ink. Laughed and ridiculed in their shiny disco clothes of purple ink.

"I invite you to my marriage. Swati."

Everyone who lived on the street recieved it. From the Brahmins to the Baniyas. From the fair faced, to the dark skinned. From the man with his three huge dogs, to the widow opposite his house with her penchant for melancholy music. Tucked in their door knobs, thrashed in their mail boxes, slid under their doors. She never invited them, face to face. Did not drag along her mother like other brides, demurely draped in a dull salwar, politely refusing the sweets placed, gladly sipping the glass of cold drink, blushingly acknowleging the tease about the groom, staunchly ignoring the talks about the past. No. In the dying hums of the balmy night, she would sling across her disfigured frame, her postman satchel of handmade wedding cards, and walk house after house, lane after lane, stopping briefly before each humble abode, to fish out the pen from behind her wild bun and with laborious strokes write the house number on top of the envelope. 

Everyone went to her wedding.

They rescheduled doctor's appointment, the trip to the tailor. They canceled on dinner invitations, some politely refused offers to watch the latest movie.The mother's made sure that their children had finished their homework before 7 and were bathed and dressed by 8. The husbands gave up on their after office banter at the street chai- walla's while devoring gulab jamuns, pulpy with hot sticky syrup. The grandmother's talked in loud, uncouth tones, the teenagers licked up a lascivious portrait of rumors. Women met up on the streets huddled and whispering and stoking a warm, exciting fire of gossip, that fed their bored spirits. 

She sat there on her bridal throne.

Dressed in a red sari. Red, the color of fresh blood. It was not new, it was not old. It was cheap and the sequins winked in a leery way as the lights fell on them. The fake diamonds and the fake emeralds and the hilariously fake rubies that studded the entire length of the six yards giggled like teenagers giggling in their shrill voices. The plastic gold that clung to her stout neck and her long fleshy earlobes shone like flashlights on a cart. Sweat and powder mixed together to form rivulets of grey all along her neck and dripping down it in a sickening way. Her blouse stuck to her swollen breasts hardly containing them, while clumps of flesh fell loose from the sides. Her bra peeked brazenly from the bottom of the blouse,the colors of last holi still staining the cotton white. She had tried to hide her stomach with her sari, but the bloated mound with its ugly navel was still discernible. Her arms were flabby, and every time she would raise her hand to fob the flies that had come to feast on her salty sweat, the flesh would dance and wiggle in a vulgar way while the harlequin bangles on either wrist shrieked. 

Her makeup- she referred and read laboriously, the makeup tips in the Sunday newspaper. The eyes were almost colored black, and the heat had made the kohl runny and now, pools of black lay underneath her eyes. She had painted an eyelids, the scintillating shade of a peacock blue. The lips were daubed with a violent pink, the cracks on the flesh oozing a little bit of dried blood. The dark facial hair on her upper lips which she had tried to conceal with some extra powder still showed-thin manly strands. Her cheeks which looked like she had stuffed her mouth with an obscene amount of food, were carefully painted in circles of rouge. Her hair was parted in the middle, straggly strands that she had plastered and then puffed into a bun like the latest bridal magazine said. But the makeup was cheap, it cracked all over the face, the sweat turning everything violet. She looked like the Made-In-China toy that the hawkers sold on the street.

She sat on her bridal throne, amidst the unwilling  red roses and wilting white lilies. Feverish and aware. From the entrance to her platform, she had ordered a red carpet to be laid, which was now littered with crushed napkins, sauf, and torn petals.  Her seat was cushioned and she sat erect, while her puffed up bun kept touching the vines of lily falling from the artificial bower. Aside her, were the few gaudy presents and in her golden handbag were the envelopes of money which her guests had given. Her bulbous eyes, the whites the color of wine, were alert and greedy, as she continuously looked at the entrance and at the size of the presents that her guests had bought. 

"Call the bride, it is time for her marriage", the pandit droned.

The guests who had been fed, and the kids who had licked their ice cream cones suddenly set alert. "Finally, we get to see the groom! ", For who would have thought Swati could get married?! She was the mad single lady of 39, whose parents murder had addled her brains at 25. She spent her time reciting macabre poetry in a loud, carrying voice, enacting every though written. She was seldom seen on the streets, except the few times when she had  to go to the market, and even then, she would carry a small knife in her hand while the wind blew her wild mane of hair in a frenzy. She fed the dark nights with her blood curling wails and feverish laments. Her howls were piercing, cold and slimy. Her garden with its growth of luscious vines and tall grass like the nails of a witch, was strewn with pictures of different God's wit their faces ripped open viciously. The Shiva had a bleeding eye, The Ganesh was torn along his forehead, Jesus lay mutilated. All on the street knew that that every Sunday at 4pm, she would stand on the same place, with the same numb look, and stare at that carpet of grass that had once since the stabbed bodies of her Mom and Dad, years back, the green caressed with the warm blood, the face turning blue, the eyes vacant in their sockets, the skin cold. She talked to none, she did not know how to smile. Once lissome, she had turned into a grossly fat woman around whom madness swirled like a malaise. 

So how, how could Swati get a groom and get married?!