Fateh Can't Dance Saaaala (But Himmat Can)

It's been a full 3 days since I left. Left Delhi, left the wedding celebrations, left my family.

The week before that was a whirlwind. A whirlwind that I have repeatedly tried to explain to outsiders in vain. Because no one truly gets it: my American friends vaguely comprehend the wedding process and my Desi friends (who actually know about about weddings and their various events) don't understand my obsession with certain songs and they just don't get the inside jokes or the endless stories that are playing on repeat in my head.

I think about the wedding at least two times every hour. I incessantly think about Shamsher on auto-pilot or Angad's beard needing cleaning on the night of the youngsters party or Niamat and um, our non-stop jokes about her neck. But these things mean nothing to the people I know here- they don't understand these stories, and the jokes just don't seem funny to them, no matter how well I try to explain. Most people over here just react with a passing laugh or a confused expression (or, in the case of the Angad beard story, they react with a disgusted face). And while I understand why this is so, I really do wish that I could share these memories with the people that I experienced them with.

When I look back at that one week, and especially when I look at the wedding pictures on facebook (repeatedly, of course) and listen to hunta thon mera (also repeatedly, of course), I remember each one of their faces. And I think about how happy I was during the wedding. I know that there were moments of frustration but now that I think about it, I genuinely feel happy that my family is my family. And while it is true that you can't choose your family and that you can choose your friends, I think I'm proud to say that my cousins are my friends, and that no matter how much I want to kill them sometimes, they're friends that I'm happy to be stuck with. No matter how frustrated I get with them, they'll always have my back. And more importantly, they will always make me laugh.

So cheers to Hersi for taking the plunge without crying and without the slightest tinge of fear or nervousness. Cheers to my moronic cousins who will always be Lutzes in my eyes. And cheers to us having many more weeks like this past one together.

I can truly say that when this week ended all I could think was "Hunta thon mera dur jan da ji ni kar da ni". Home is home, Delhi is Delhi, family is family. And my family is crazy. Cheers to nothing ever changing that.