British Asians and the Grand Trunk Road - Weddings

Wedding garlands for sale in Jalandhar. A newly married couple on the roof of the ©Tim Smith Golden Temple in Amritsar. ©Tim Smith

A young man from Walsall arrives at the The bride is carried to the groom’s car in house of his Mirpuri bride, and is greeted a traditional doli [palanquin] to begin her by her family. Once he is fed and married life with his family. ©Tim Smith garlanded he waits for the ceremony to begin. ©Tim Smith

Everybody thought my grandma was so courageous to marry off her daughter to somebody in England. She was never going to get to see her again! England just seemed so far away. It was somewhere nobody could go to, and nobody returned. I remember we all went to drop her off at the airport. You stayed till the very end, until the plane had taken off because you knew your loved one was on that plane. And then you watched the plane up in the sky and you kept watching until it disappeared out of sight. And then you thought, ‘It’s gone now and it’s taken our relative with it!’ I remember we watched that aeroplane with wonder, and with sorrow too. You felt that a part of your life has gone.

Mostly the people from Saleh Khana get married here (in Saleh Khana). The boys come back from England and get married here. And the girls educated there, in British society, some really bright girls, are forced to marry someone from their village who has not seen a school in his life. So that is an unfortunate aspect. Of course it creates problems. The girl is educated. She wants to watch television and whatever. And a boy from here! He knows house, mosque and other social places. So how can the two of them live together? It is so difficult! She speaks in English but he doesn’t know English. She is a little too forward, too modern for him. The way she dresses, he doesn’t approve of that. So there are problems. For the parents, they would rather get their daughters married with this illiterate man from their village rather than get her

Resource provided by www.mylearning.org © Irna Qureshi & Tim Smith, Bradford Libraries married to somebody who is outside the family or village circle. The parents just want to make sure they do not lose respect in the society and that they are not looked down upon that their daughter got married to someone who is outside their own social environment.