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Dec 1990
Sept 1999
Seattle monsoon weddings
Monsoon = a season in South and Southeast Asia during which "When it rains, it pours" very heavily but not for long.

Bon Journal

Monsoon Wedding

A wedding is a special occasion for the invited guest. It's an intense dose of a culture, family relationships, and a kaleidoscopic collage of the lives of the groom and bride. Probably the most colourful and lengthy celebration I have been privileged to attend is the Punjabi wedding, as depicted in the movie Monsoon Wedding.

Monsoon Wedding is one of those wedding movies and non-Hollywood blockbusters that I've wanted to see for some time now. By chance, it was playing at the local cinema on Saturday evening. The colours, the music, and the thickening plot made up for the Dutch sub-titles that I couldn't understand. It reminded me of the two weddings I attended in Seattle many years ago as well as the Bollywood movies I watched at my friends' homes in Okinawa before they got married.

My Punjabi friend in London told me that Indian weddings are always big because you have to invite not only your immediate family members but also extended family members and their current partners, children, and other attachments. Five hundred guests is considered typical, if not small. The event is spread over several days.

In the movie, the first scene shows that of the father of the bride preparing for the wedding. He is completely stressed out. He has to borrow money to pay for the wedding of his only daughter, whom he is reluctant to part with. His daughter, on the other hand, isn't entirely sure about the arranged marriage. Later he has to make a difficult decision after a disturbing family secret is revealed.

The themes of high stress, tension, cold feet, and a disaster about to happen are not uncommon at any wedding. However, it's the way the first-time screen writer Sabrina Dhawan combines a moving dialogue (in both English and Punjabi) and an unfolding story that makes the movie so exciting to watch.

Harvard-educated Mira Nair directed this movie in 30 days. Previously she directed Kama Sutra, a movie I watched in Houston. It opened my eyes to see the beauty of Indian people and their culture. Monsoon Wedding is another testimony of that --- beautiful, interesting, and rich.

17 November 2003 Monday

Monsoon Wedding directed by Mira Nair
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Anne Ku

writes about her travels, conversations, thoughts, events, music, and anything else that is interesting enough to fill a web page.