Kavita Ramdya & The Romantic Call of Bollywood

If you’ve been reading Beatrice for a while, you know I’ve collaborated with the Asian American Writers Workshop to put together some fun events in the past—I’m not actually involved with their speed-dating workshop coming up this Saturday night, but it sounds like it could be fun for the romantically unattached, and it’s especially encouraging to see that they’re covering all the major orientations. When I first heard about the event, I got curious about Bollywood Weddings: Dating, Engagement, and Marriage in Hindu America, so I asked Kavita Ramdya to talk a bit about what inspired her to pursue this subject and interview a bunch of people about their weddings. (She also shares her own backstory on her website.) The event is already sold out—which is very good news for the AAWW’s fundraising efforts—but I think you’ll find Ramdya’s field of study quite interesting in its own right…

Bollywood Weddings is ultimately a compilation of real-life stories describing how people fall in love, what they look for in a potential partner and how popular culture, in this case Bollywood films, influences their conceptions of love, romance and marriage. Ironically, Bollywood never entered my mind in the four months of library research, reading and prep work I did before interviewing approximately twenty married couples. The original dichotomy I was working with was America’s modern, love marriage versus India’s traditional arranged marriage. However, while conducting my interviews and attending twenty weddings, Bollywood kept popping up as a recurring theme. The second-generation Indian-American women I met couldn’t relate to the fitted, strapless white wedding dresses worn by models in mainstream wedding magazines since white is traditionally considered the color of mourning in Hindu culture and displaying one’s sensuality is frowned upon in Indian families. However, these same men and women I interviewed couldn’t relate to the way their parents married: none of the couples I met had arranged marriages. Instead, many of them had “arranged meetings” where they were introduced to prospective marriage candidates who were ethnically, religiously and regionally compatible, people they were then “allowed” to date and with whom they could fall in love and marry.

In interviewing married couples, I was surprised, needless to say, by learning how significant a role the Bollywood film industry is in young Hindus’ conceptions of India, love, romance and weddings. Just as Hollywood movies may influence bridal trends for American Christian and Jewish brides, Bollywood movies serve as a source for wedding planning and learning about Hinduism, information Indian-American Hindus seek at such a significant rite-of-passage. Although the young men and women I interviewed were professionals (doctors, engineers, or finance professionals), well educated at the best universities and lead cosmopolitan lives in fast-paced New York, they seek religiously “accurate” information about Hindu wedding customs. Bollywood cinema emerged as the answer to their desire for information.

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5 March 2010 | guest authors |

Joshua Marie Wilkinson, “Noise in the Shape of Its City”

Now I am ready
to move gently
at the speed
of the birds
towards your speed.

The Book of Whispering in the Projection Booth is the fourth book of poems by Joshua Marie Wilkinson. It also includes “The Book of the Umbrella” (extracts published in La Petite Zine) and “The Book of Falling Asleep in the Bathtub and Snow” (Coconut Poetry). You’ll also want to read “A Brief History of Lying” (Jubilat) and “A Brief History of Spying” (Boston Review).

This poem is actually an anomaly in Whispering for its brevity; the book tends towards more prose-like pieces or longer poems. In an interview with 12 or 20 Questions, Wilkinson explained his writing process: “A poem usually begins as prose writing, and I accumulate a lot of it, then I mine it for something that has a certain spark. I throw away heaps of what issues forth. But I type up what seems to pass some test and then I arrange it, sometimes into discreet poems, but usually into longer sections, passages, parts, or longer poems.” (And here’s another interview that focuses more directly on Whispering.)

By the way, if you’re in Iowa City or San Francisco, you can go to a Wilkinson reading this week; see his website for details (March 3 and 5, respectively).

1 March 2010 | poetry |