Two Countries, One Uncle

My family has weddings in two countries, and they are not the same wedding.

In Chennai, a wedding is three days long. The card says seven in the morning, but nobody comes at seven. My aunt cooks for two hundred guests, including twenty or thirty people that nobody can name. There is music from a van in the street. There are children under the tables. Somebody's phone rings in the most important minute, and nobody minds.

In Leeds, a wedding is shorter and much quieter. Sixty guests, and every guest is on a list by the door. The card says two o'clock, and at two o'clock we sit down and the room goes silent. My colleague from work opened a sweet in her bag and then whispered “sorry” to the people next to her.

The gifts are different too. In Chennai people give cash in a small envelope, and my grandmother writes every name in a book. In Leeds people choose a thing from a list in a shop — a silver photo frame, six glasses, a lamp for a room they have never seen.

So: three days or one afternoon, two hundred or sixty, cash or glasses. My father says the two countries can't agree about anything.

But my uncle cries at both. He cried in the hot sun in Chennai, and he cried in the rain in Leeds, in the same dark suit, in the same ten minutes of the day. Two countries, two weddings, one crying uncle. That part never changes.