ABSTRACT
In the song that opens this chapter, the women of the bride’s household sing from the bride’s point of view. Despite the accusation, though, not all brides in Bijnor were married “so distantly,” at least not in a geographical sense. In the space of one week in early May 1982, some half-dozen marriages took place in Jhakri. Just as among Hindus in Bijnor, most Muslim marriages entailed village exogamy, although the distances involved were usually less. Gulshan’s wedding presented a logistical problem, however. Gulshan was born in Jhakri. She was to be married into a home that backed onto the house of one of her uncles, which itself faced Gulshan’s across the courtyard. But a wedding, people said, necessitated something a bit more dramatic than having the men of the groom’s party simply clamber up the steep stairway onto the roof of the groom’s house, walk over the rooftops, and descend into the courtyard of the bride’s home. A real barāt ought to travel rather more than twenty yards, and it ought also to arrive in style.
