One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter: Essays

by Scaachi Koul

There are two types of people who insist that Indian weddings are fun. The first are white people, who are frequently well-meaning but stupid and enjoy things vaguely different from themselves by exoticizing them. Do not talk to me about how you love the “colours” of an Indian wedding—

The second type are any people who have never actually been to an Indian wedding in India with Indian people. Or, at least, have never been to the entirety of an Indian wedding, the full five to seven days, the multiple outfits, the familial requirements that forfeit your time and independence. No, these people swoop in for the ceremony and reception, they eat some pakoras and talk about how “cute” it is when little girls have unibrows, maybe they show up early for the henna ceremony and ask for a lower-back tat, and then we never see them again. Indian weddings are a lot of things, but “fun” has never been their purpose.

Indian girls grow up going to weddings and we watch the procedure and we know our roles: be demure, don’t complain, cry but don’t scream, get tea for anyone older than you, and calmly meet expectations.

A place, any place, can be beautiful and perfect and damaged and dangerous at the same time.

My version of media is one that looks like other people, because I remember being a little girl and wishing I read books or magazine articles or saw movies about people who even remotely looked like me.

It changes you, when you see someone similar to you, doing the thing you might want to do yourself.

We are deeply afraid of making marginalized voices stronger, because we think it makes privileged ones that much weaker.