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Wedding

We are getting married. You are invited. There is a bus.

Bring Shoes You Can Ruin

Saturday the fourteenth of March, in a mango orchard outside Nashik. Four o’clock until the generator surrenders. Read this page properly, because the directions genuinely matter and at least six of you will end up at a petrol pump regardless.

Aarav & Ishita

A word before the logistics

Eleven weddings in three years. We took notes.

Eleven weddings in three years, and the notes were consistent: nobody remembers the flowers, everybody remembers the queue for the food, and the best night of the lot was the one where the sound system died at eleven and somebody’s cousin sang instead.

So we have gone the other way. An orchard outside Nashik. A farmhouse belonging to Ishita’s aunt. Forty-seven folding chairs liberated from the school hall at Wadgaon, which we have promised to return in the same number and roughly the same condition.

One long table. Sixty places. No seating plan, no top table, and therefore nobody to be quietly offended by where they have been put. Come at four. Stay until the generator gives up, which it will, at about midnight, dramatically.

Time left to buy a shirt

folding chairs, borrowed

Gates at four. The clock exists because Ishita’s mother has asked how long is left on eleven separate occasions, so we thought we would automate her.

The evidence, in order

  1. October 2019
    A housewarming half of you were at

    A housewarming half of you were at

    Nikhil’s new flat, forty people, one very loud playlist, and the neighbours’ dog howling through all of it. Ishita said he was singing along. Aarav said he was in distress. That was the entire first conversation and it lasted two hours.

  2. That winter
    The bus we both kept getting on

    The bus we both kept getting on

    The same route home, twice a week. Entirely by accident for the first month, and entirely on purpose after that.

  3. 2021
    The flat above the bakery

    The flat above the bakery

    One room, no counter, and the smell of bread at half past four every morning. We cooked on two burners and fed whoever turned up. Several of you turned up.

  4. March 2023
    Biscuit moves in

    Biscuit moves in

    The dog from the housewarming, rehomed to us when Nikhil moved abroad. He is eleven now and still howls at that song. We have stopped arguing about why.

  5. Last October
    The question, asked badly, on a station platform

    The question, asked badly, on a station platform

    Aarav had four weeks of speech ready and used none of it. The 8:40 was announced halfway through. Ishita said yes over the tannoy, and then we both got on it, because it was the last one.

  6. This March
    All of you, in an orchard

    All of you, in an orchard

    Which is the part you come into.

Four weeks of drafting.

One train announcement.

She said yes over the tannoy —

and we still got on the 8:40, because it was the last one.

Photographic evidence, unflattering

Half of these were taken by whoever got hold of the phone. Complaints to them, not us.

A schedule, loosely enforced

Saturday 14 March
Gates open at fourCome early if you want a good chair. There are 47 and they came from the school hall.
The ceremony
Half past five, under the biggest treeForty minutes. Nobody has to sit through a speech until dinner.
Photographs
Six o’clock, while the light is still goldTwenty minutes, then you are free for the rest of the evening.
Dinner
Eight, at one long tableSixty seats, no place cards. Sit next to somebody you have not met.
Dancing
From nine until the generator gives upHistorically, about midnight.
Last bus back
Half past twelve, from the gateSanjay waits ten minutes and not a minute more. He has done this before.

Read this bit properly

Your phone will lie to you at the last moment.

Your map will announce that you have arrived, at a petrol pump, on a highway. You have not. Keep going. Left after the temple with the blue gate, then four kilometres of what the district optimistically calls a road. It is a road for about two of them.

Your car will survive. Your suspension will lodge a formal complaint. Somebody in the back will say “are you sure this is right” at kilometre three; the answer is yes, and please stop asking.

Or take the bus: free, three o’clock, Nashik Road station, driven by Sanjay, who has done this route for eleven years and is a considerably better driver than anyone reading this. Coming back he waits ten minutes at the gate and then he is gone. Tell us by the first of March if you want a seat.

Logistics, unavoidably

Where
Aamrai Farm, Wadgaon, outside Nashik
The drive
Two and a half hours from MumbaiThe last four kilometres are unpaved. Go slowly; the potholes are locally famous.
The bus
Three o’clock from Nashik Road stationFree, and easier than parking. Tell Meera by 1 March if you want a seat.
Parking
In the field by the gateIt is a field. If it has rained in the week, park along the track instead.
Staying over
Six rooms at the farmhouse, then the guest house in WadgaonThe six go to whoever is travelling furthest. Meera is keeping that list.
What to wear
Anything you would dance inGrass and dust. Heels will sink. This is not us being poetic.
Open the map

The important section

While you arrive
Kokum sherbet and thin sev puriThe sherbet is Ishita’s mother’s. She will tell you it is nothing special. It is.
First
Bhakri, thecha, and the beans nobody expects to like
Mains
Mutton on the bone, and a paneer that is not an apologyCooked by Shalini and four people she has bullied into helping.
Save room for
Aarav’s grandmother’s shrikhandShe makes it once a year. This is the year she has chosen.
Later
Chai at eleven, for whoever is still standing
If you do not eat something
Tell Meera by 1 March and it will be thereNo apology needed, and no separate sad plate. We have planned for it.

We are roughly forty songs short

The song the dog ruined in 2019Side A

Send Meera one song each before the first of March and we will play the lot, badly, at some point after ten. The one from Nikhil’s housewarming is already in. Biscuit howled through it in 2019 and we are expecting a repeat performance.

Everything you were going to text us at midnight

Turn them over. If yours is missing, ask Meera, who is unpaid and has been magnificent.

Requests, none of them gifts

Five requests, one of them enforced

  1. 01No gifts. Genuinely none. Turn up with a box and we will make you carry it back to the bus.
  2. 02Tell Meera by the first of March whether you are coming, and whether you want a seat on the bus.
  3. 03Send Meera one song each. We will play all of them, including yours.
  4. 04If there is something you do not eat, say so by the first of March.
  5. 05Bring whatever photographs you still have from Nikhil’s housewarming in 2019. We have four between us.

The sincere paragraph. It is short.

One chair stays empty, and we are not taking questions.

Those four kilometres of alleged road you will be complaining about is where Ishita learned to drive. Her father would hand over the wheel at the temple, say nothing whatsoever until the gate, and then say: again. This is how she came to be excellent at reversing and terrible at braking early.

He died in 2022. His chair is at the end of the long table and it stays empty. Please do not tiptoe around it. The sherbet you get handed at the gate is his recipe, so you will have had a drink with him before anybody says anything official. Ask her mother about the driving lessons — she has been sitting on those stories for a year and they are funnier than anything we have got.

A speech now, so the real ones stay short

To all of you, and to whoever drives the van

  • To Nikhil, who threw the party, and to the dog next door, who did the actual work.
  • To Meera, unpaid, who has answered forty questions this month that were addressed to us.
  • To Shalini, and to the four people she has bullied into helping her cook.
  • To whoever ends up driving forty-seven folding chairs back to a school hall on a Sunday morning.
  • And to all of you, for doing four kilometres of terrible road for one dinner.

Written down, because neither of us will manage it out loud

A wedding is an outrageous thing to ask of people. We are taking a Saturday off you, plus a shirt, plus four kilometres of road that barely qualifies, and in exchange you get a folding chair, a plate of mutton and a long walk to the car in the dark.

We did think about this while writing the list, which is why the list is short. Nobody is on it out of duty. Everybody on it has fed one of us, or waited out one of our worse months without commenting, or produced a van at forty minutes’ notice, or sat in a hospital corridor, or kept ringing when we had gone quiet and were pretending to be busy.

You are not set dressing for the photographs. You are the actual event. The photographs are a side effect.

So: come at four, eat far too much, and tell everyone at the table what we were like before. And if you spot one of us standing alone looking mildly stunned at some point in the evening, come and stand there too.

— A & I, already worrying about chairs

Forty-seven borrowed chairs.

One long table, no seating plan.

Four kilometres of alleged road.

One dog, entirely responsible.

Fourteenth of March, four o’clock.

Come hungry. Wear shoes you can ruin.

Please come. There is mutton.

Meera needs a yes or a no by the first of March. A no is fine. A maybe is a chair somebody else could have been sitting on.

Aarav & Ishita · 14 March · bring nothing, eat everything