My Sister's Big Fat Indian Wedding Read online

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for and may be obtained from the Library of Congress.

  ISBN 978–1–4197–5453–1

  eISBN 978–1–64700–283–1

  Text © 2022 Sajni Patel

  Chapter and folio art credit to: Anna Poguliaeva/Shutterstock.com

  Book design by Chelsea Hunter

  Published in 2022 by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS.

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  To Parthkita, who have blessed our families with the amazingness that is unequivocally you. Thank you for the wedding of a lifetime and for the memories that will last lifetimes yet to come.

  Thank you for picking up My Sister’s Big Fat Indian Wedding and taking a chance on this wild, loud, bigger-than-life family. I hope you’re ready to embark on all the ups and downs of a fierce girl chasing her musical dreams, the competitive and romantic sides of two young hearts, the bonds of a large and tight-knit family, and—of course—a whirlwind, cinematic wedding week inspired by my sibling’s actual wedding events.

  Join Zuri and Naveen as they face off against one another, their creative pursuits, and meddling aunties. I sincerely hope you enjoy!

  With that being said . . . you are hereby cordially invited to the biggest, fattest, Indian-est wedding of the season!

  Many thanks and so much love,

  Sajni Patel

  CHAPTER ONE

  (Saturday Morning: Eight Days Until the Wedding)

  #MySistersBigFatIndianWedding

  Being forced down by an auntie armed with nothing but a thread was as scary as being chased through the woods by a clown. Except you actually had a chance of outrunning the clown. You could not, in fact, outrun the auntie.

  Getting my eyebrows threaded required aforementioned auntie to hold me down, her elbow pinning my shoulder back, as she deftly plucked hairs. I wasn’t a crybaby, but something about threading single hairs from their roots had my nerves on hypersensitive mode, and tears rolled down my cheeks.

  “Agh! I can’t take it anymore! Stop!” I crawled up the back of my desk chair.

  “Stop being a child, Zurika. You need this. Look at your eyebrows. When was the last time you maintained them?” She clucked her tongue.

  “Never. And now I know why. What sort of torture device is this?”

  Neha snickered from the doorway. She’d already had her eyebrows threaded this morning, and they were now red and swollen. But my little sister didn’t turn her experience into sympathy. She merely enjoyed my pain, her arms crossed and leaning against the side of the door frame.

  “OK! Child. You’re done,” the auntie announced and grunted as if the amount of facial hair she’d removed had exhausted her. At what point in history had someone decided we girls were supposed to be hairless, anyway? Who’d decided that? Probably not anyone who needed a good threading.

  I sighed and melted into my chair.

  “What about your top lip?” the auntie suggested.

  I immediately shot up. “Oh god, no!”

  “You have a hairy face,” she exaggerated.

  “I don’t care.” But I hated that I did actually care. A little.

  “Your cheeks and . . . these sideburns!” She tsked. Leave it to a threading auntie to tell a girl that she was hideously hairy in an untactful and unsolicited manner. No one freaking asked her. Yet I couldn’t tell her that because elder respect, etc., etc.

  I pushed her arm away before she brought that seemingly innocuous piece of thread back to my face for another round of torture.

  She eventually relented with a huff and left as I tried not to rub my tender brows. Pain for beauty? I think not.

  Without further entertainment, Neha shrugged and joined the ever-growing ruckus of family downstairs. I bet all twenty-plus in-close-proximity family members were already here.

  Mummie walked into my room, startling me with that look. The one that said she knew what I was up to and it was time for me to fess up and pay the consequences. Oh my god. How did she always know? My hope was that Mummie was actually preempting any potential nonsense rather than having figured out my secret plan.

  All the aunties had warned that if anything went wrong (even the teensiest bit) during wedding festivities, kismet dictated it a bad omen that would forever mar the future of the couple. Things like a sick groom, a stained bridal outfit, smeared mehndi, bad food, a dropped cake—even rain or, in the case of humid old Atlanta, heatstroke.

  I supposed aunties and their superstitions had left out one minor example: me. Aka: younger sisters who ran off to do their own thing instead of tending to wedding duties, starting a domino effect where one missing person led to fumbling and chaos in an absurdly tight schedule laden with a million details.

  For a minute, I thought for sure Mummie had discovered something worthy of grounding me for life in this horribly packed room. Not drugs or nude pics or even a note from a boy. But . . . college admission letters. Dun, dun, dun . . . The bane of my mortal teenage existence.

  Some colleges sent both email and paper notifications. According to my parents, I was to avoid checking electronic responses and wait on the requested paper letters. Something about leaving the unopened letters on the altar so my parents could pray over the results. But there was one college I thoroughly checked on at least once a day.

  Juilliard—my dream school—had responded. The email had popped up in my in-box yesterday morning. But guess who was too chicken to woman up and check the fate of my entire musical career?

  Ugh. It was just sitting there, taunting me, telling me to click to behold my future . . . or lack thereof. But see, the thing was that my parents and sisters didn’t know about Juilliard. They thought I’d only applied to the best prelaw programs in the country. After all, I had to follow in their very strong law careers. Law was ideal, logical. Not music.

  And definitely not my music. Mine was, as my parents put it, a disgrace to classical violin. While my sisters enjoyed it for a casual experience (never, ever for a career), my cousins and friends and school thought it was a brilliant mix of violin and hip-hop and rock. To me, it was just the music that moved my soul.

  My parents and older sisters kept reinforcing that I was in crunch time now. I had to think of my future . . . something boring and dreadful like law or medicine or whatever else uncles pressed upon Papa as being respectable and prestigious.

  They would never understand. Which was why I’d applied to only a handful of colleges that were out of my league and, of course, the one and only Juilliard. All right, hear me out. If I didn’t have another college acceptance, then of course my parents would let me attend a music college. Dream big or go home, right? Take my shot. And if by some cruel fate Juilliard said no, then oh well. There was no
other college admittance. Therefore, go to Juilliard now or wait until the following semester.

  I almost flinched when Mummie chided, “Do not ruin your sister’s wedding.”

  “How . . . what?”

  She placed her hands on her hips, her glass bangles clinking against one another, and tilted her head. She had four bangles on each wrist, red and gold to match the elegant sari draped over her. She only wore saris in Gujarati style, with the end of the long piece of fabric brought over the shoulder from the back so it was pleated and fanned out over her chest and stomach with one corner tucked into the waist of the chaniya underneath. She said it displayed the ornate end better and covered her tummy.

  “Who? Me?” I asked innocently.

  Nah. She wasn’t buying it.

  My shoulders slumped in defeat as she gently took the folded-up flyer from beneath my pillow. OK, so there was something hidden from Mummie in this mess. How did she always know! But if a printed-out invitation to a musical college contest was the worst thing my mom had ever found in my room, then how bad could it be?

  Oh, wait. I was Indian. Maybe some folks from my diaspora didn’t have this impending doom, but in my family, we did not chase creative dreams. Not to mention my moti bens, Urvi and Maitri—two nearly perfect older sisters. They flourished in law like kick-butt feminists, shattering glass ceilings and taking names. I had a lot to live up to, and I had to be the next role model for Neha, who was only fourteen and incredibly unfocused.

  You counted that right. My parents had four daughters and zero sons. So, while my sister’s impending wedding was a giant blessing overflowing with joy and excitement, it was also a sorrowful time, because daughters left their parents and joined their husbands’ families. Therefore, Mummie was ecstatic at having matched Maitri to an awesome guy but ultimately miserable because she was going to lose another daughter, and now she homed in on every minute, out-of-place detail.

  “Do not try to sneak off to do anything this time,” she warned, as if she’d long since known about the contest. Maybe she had—she was a mom, after all. Did she know that I’d sent an audition tape in to the Atlanta Musical Scouting Competition a few months ago? And that they’d invited me to audition in person tonight? And it just happened to fall on spring break, aka during my sister’s big fat Indian wedding?

  I was thoroughly tempted to go. I mean, not everyone made it this far, and there would be big-name college scouts there, plus the winner would be awarded a full-ride scholarship. It was my duty, actually, to audition. But then Mummie shot her warning look of doom, making my insides sink for fear of getting into massive trouble and bringing negative vibes to my sister’s wedding.

  Put two and two together, and I had one heck of a wrecking ball of a week coming up. Anxiety was already sprouting across my brain like tiny thistles.

  “I would never do anything to jeopardize the carefully scheduled wedding week,” I insisted, all innocent-like.

  “It is very important to be present and ready for all the traditions. You may not understand them all, but they are crucial for a complete wedding weekend and a harmonious marriage. You are sister to the bride, and everyone will expect to see you there, not to mention the tasks you must carry out. Do you understand?”

  “Ha, Mummie. I wouldn’t disrupt a single thing.”

  Papa walked by and touched Mummie’s shoulder. His shiny new kurta pajama in orange gold, mustard yellow, and red matched Mummie’s new sari. “Come. Let’s go. The Brahman is here. And don’t worry about my beta, Zuri. She will be perfect for the wedding, huh?”

  I nodded, rubbing my tender eyebrows. “Of course.”

  “I trust my beta.”

  Mummie leaned toward me, squinting. “Your brows are red and swelling.”

  “Well, yeah—” I started to explain the threading, but she cut me off and suggested, “Go eat some sweets. They’ll make it better.”

  “Uh . . .” Threading and food had absolutely nothing to do with each other, but my mom swore to the gods that food fixed everything.

  Papa nodded in agreement and then looked to Mummie. “One of my acquaintances is in town. Do you remember Mihir Merchant from New York?”

  Mummie nodded. “Ha.”

  “He’s here for work. I want to invite him to the wedding.”

  She laughed, a melodious note in the air. “I say invite whomever you want, but Maitri will have a fit adding an extra person.”

  Papa put a finger to his lips and winked at me. “Don’t tell her, then.”

  I pretended to zip my lips. I wasn’t going to be the one sending my sister over the edge with another unexpected detail.

  He said to Mummie, “I’ll give him a call. It should be OK, adding one more person. In fact, I’m sure someone here or there will not make it last minute, and then we’ve wasted money. I’m doing Maitri a service.”

  I giggled.

  “Challo. We need to finish setting up for puja,” he ended and gave me a reassuring, proud smile.

  “Ha, coming,” Mummie said.

  Papa clasped his hands behind his back, his chin tilted up as if he were surveying everything, and walked downstairs to add final touches to the preparations for one of many prayer rituals to come. Once he was gone, Mummie turned back to me and whipped out her cell phone.

  I eyed it cautiously as she deliberately swiped across her screen with a finger. My parents loved their cell phones. They could jibber-jabber all day long, anywhere, anytime. They had yet to master the text message, sending pictures, and emails. But they had WhatsApp, the most beloved app among my kind, it seemed, to do all that. It was mind-boggling how my mom went from fumbling newbie cell phone user to master of tech with WhatsApp.

  She turned the screen to me. “What do you think?”

  I glared at a picture of a very attractive dude. Maybe it was the filters. It was almost always the filters.

  If my mom was showing me pictures of a boy, that could only mean . . . “He’s OK,” I replied warily.

  “His name is Naveen. He is Jijaji’s cousin from South Africa.”

  I, of course, knew this, thanks to social media. Pranit (aka Jijaji #2, aka the groom) had tagged Naveen in a bunch of his posts, and he always liked or commented on them. I might’ve even looked through Naveen’s social media, too. All right, of course I had! He was about to get tagged in a bunch of wedding posts by me soon enough anyway, since the couple had left me in charge of their joint social media. I had to know who he was.

  “He’s the boy you’re dancing with at the big reception dance, no?”

  “Um, yeah . . .” Our dance wasn’t, like, some romantic thing, though. We were retelling the couple’s story, and Naveen was to play Pranit while I played Maitri. It wasn’t some starry-eyed setup. Right?

  Mummie went on, “He comes from a good family—good Indian boy. He’s starting college next year, majoring in engineering. He’s very smart and will make good money. He’s a handsome boy, no?”

  “Sure.”

  “You’ll meet him this week. You’ll like him.”

  “He’s OK.”

  “No. I’m not asking you. I’m telling you.”

  “Uh . . .”

  Then she took her phone back.

  “How serious are you?” I asked her.

  “You’re too young to think about marriage right now, but maybe start thinking of a boy for down the road. If you like each other now, who knows for later? It’s important to know him for a while, huh? See how he truly is.”

  “Like . . . staking claim now for later?”

  “Ha! Exactly.” She touched my cheek before sashaying out of the room, leaving me in total bewilderment.

  There were no other words to be said.

  CHAPTER TWO

  (Saturday Morning: Eight Days Until the Wedding)

  #DemDamaniGirls

  I couldn’t help but rub the tender area around my brows when Krish popped her head into my room. I hadn’t even noticed who all had arrived, but of course my aunts an
d uncles and cousins were here somewhat on time. Which was a feat in itself, really.

  She beamed as she closed my bedroom door. She only ever smiled that gigantically when she had something juicy to tell me.

  I tilted my head as she sat beside me on the bed with a sudden oomph! It probably had to do with school . . . or college.

  My cousin—and absolute bestie—had her entire life all planned out. Krish had known she wanted to go into medicine since the first day she’d dissected a worm in middle school. Anatomy and physiology classes were her jam. Biology and chemistry—stuff that was way over my head—were her foundation. I couldn’t even touch a worm without screaming, much less cut into one.

  Sometimes I wondered if Krish and I had been switched at birth, if maybe she was actually the third-oldest sister in our brood, with how she carried herself and followed a solid career path. She, like my older sisters, was functioning and stable. I was chaos in comparison.

  “Whatcha got?” I asked, turning toward her and grinning.

  “Look!” she squealed and whipped out her cell phone. She scrolled through an email and landed her finger on a big ol’ “Congratulations, Krishna Damani! We are pleased to inform you that you’ve been accepted into Emory College of Arts and Sciences’ undergraduate biology program at Emory University.”

  I threw my arms around Krish’s shoulders and tackled her to the bed. We laughed as she pushed me off. “Calm down,” she said between giggles.

  I took her phone and read the words again. “Yo. Your parents must be ecstatic! Emory is your top med school.”

  She grinned superhard. “Yep. That’s the one. But no, my parents don’t know. I was supposed to wait for the official paper letter so they could offer it for prayer or whatever. But I couldn’t help it!”

  “Ah! So amazing. I knew you’d get in.” I handed her the phone.

  “So, tell me, tell me! Did you hear from anyone?”

  “No. Not even Georgia State.”

  “What about Emory?”

  “Ha!” I cackled. “Yeah, right. Emory was so I could go to school with you if all else failed. But let’s be honest, that’s wishful thinking.”