The India-Indiana Wedding

I don't know if any of you saw the ABCnews program this evenine focusing on weddings, but if you did, I am sure you noticed the wedding that highlighted the India-Indiana wedding. It was of course the wedding that focused on "the girl from India who married the boy from Indiana." Nevermind that the girl was a desi-American, it is afterall, whatever will make the story sell.

The wedding was in fact the story of desi-American lawyer Rupa Goswami, and her all American husband from Indian Tim Searight, a fellow U.S. attorney in her Los Angeles office.

"I got my dream job, which was to be a U.S. attorney in Los Angeles," Rupa told ABC News. "So I wasn't going to let anything get in the way of doing this job."
An arranged marriage was out of the question, but that didn't stop Rupa's mother Shila from worrying.

Shila says she put her faith in the gods, visiting many temples. "There is no god left at Indian temples that I didn't go," she said. "Everywhere I went, and I said this is the last prayer I'm doing. Please give me that."

Then, as if right out of a Bollywood movie, her prayers were answered. Rupa met Tim

But had the gods misunderstood? Tim was fair-haired, blue-eyed and not from India, but Indiana.

Searight said, "We were literally and truly born on the opposite sides of the world. If you were to look at the map, you would see they're directly on the opposite sides of the world." At first, Rupa wasn't interested in him "at all," and she was very concerned about having an office romance.

They were also of two different religions. Tim was baptized in the Presbyterian church. "My parents then took me to the Methodist church in Indiana," he said. "And then I started attending an Episcopalian church." Rupa is Hindu. But Rupa and Tim started to fall in love. He took her to Paris. "I just felt really comfortable. It was very smooth and very easy and I thought very comfortable. Then I thought, 'Well, this might work,' " she said.

The couple actually co-starred in their very own home-made Bollywood musical. Tim fully embraced the Indian culture of Rupa — and especially her parents. "Tim so easily became part of us. So easily," said Shila. "Many Indian boys would not, they'll be stiff. Tim wasn't like that. Tim came in a very spontaneous way." When Rupa told her father Tim was Christian, he asked: "How Christian is he?" There was Rupa's advancing age to consider. "In my family it's all good," she said. "He's male, he's breathing, you know, no felony conviction."

Anyway, I am sure most of you get it. To read the full article from abcnews.com click here. I saw the show, and in fact enjoyed it even though I found it a little condescending, as if a desi Hindu marrying a white person is so out of the ordinary out of the days. It was almost as if the show was trying to find conflict. Too bad for the show, and good for Rupa and Tim, that there wasn't any. DESIBLOG wishes the couple well.

And here is story from the Washington Post on the nuptuals.

"The wedding -- which Christine described as "a theatrical production, like putting on a Broadway show" -- began with Tim riding a painted elephant down a street to the Pasadena Museum of California Art, where the ceremony was to take place. Members of his family, dressed in traditional Hindu outfits, danced in front of the elephant. When they reached the museum, the procession was led to the third floor terrace by a bagpiper that represented the Searights' Scottish heritage."

Quick question, does anyone know what a Hindu outfit is?

posted by sajit @ 11:28 PM