For a time after the departure of the spy, however, the mood in Pachigam was celebratory. Pandit Pyarelal Kaul agreed to resume his teaching duties, to shoulder the dual burdens of education and gastronomy as long as his strength lasted; and preparations for the nuptials of Boonyi and Shalimar the clown began. However, snags soon started cropping up. The detailed wedding arrangements proved more problematic than Abdullah, with his plan for an idealistic, multifaith ceremony, had foreseen. This was because of the arrival of the families. From Poonch, from Baramulla, from Sonamarg, from Tangmarg, from Chhamb, from Aru, from Uri, from Udhampur, from Kishtwar, from Riasi, from Jammu, the two clans gathered; aunts, cousins, uncles, more cousins, great-aunts, great-uncles, nephews, nieces, yet more cousins and in-laws descended on Pachigam until all the village’s houses were badly overcrowded and many minor relatives had to sleep under the fruit trees and trust to luck regarding rain and snakes. Almost all the new arrivals had strong ideas and expectations about the proceedings, and many of them were openly scornful of the sarpanch’s ecumenical scheme. “What, she won’t convert to Islam?” the doubters from the groom’s side demanded, and the bride’s people retorted, “What, there will be meat served at the feast?” All over the village and in the surrounding fields and pastures the arguments raged. The only thing generally agreed was that the traditional Muslim Thap ceremony, when the young couple meet in a public place to decide if they want to go ahead with the match, was unnecessary. “They have thapped each other long ago,” said a wicked aunt’s tongue, and there was laughter from wicked uncles, cousins, great-aunts, great-uncles, further cousins and so on.
Then came the argument over the Livun ceremonies of the Hindus, when, the Kauls insisted, the two families’ houses should be ritually cleansed. “Let the Kauls cleanse their idolatrous home if they need to,” said a hard-line old Muslim granny, “but our people’s place is already perfectly clean.” Nobody objected to frequent wazwaan banquets, naturally, and the veg/nonveg disputes were relatively easily resolved when Pandit Pyarelal Kaul, in spite of his abiding love for meat, agreed to banish all trace of it from his kitchen, while the Nomans, who had built a new brick-and-mud wuri oven in their backyard, offered daily menus that were carnivore’s delights. At the actual wedding, it was agreed after much haggling, separate groups of chefs would prepare both cuisines, chicken to the left, lotus to the right, goat meat on one side, goat cheese on the other. Music, too, was agreed on without too much dispute. The santoor, the sarangi, the rabab, the harmonium were nonsectarian instruments, after all. Professional bachkot singers and musicians were hired and ordered to alternate Hindu bhajans and Sufi hymns.
The question of the bride’s clothes was far thornier. “Obviously,” said the groom’s side, “when the yenvool, the wedding procession, comes to the bride’s house, we will expect to be welcomed by a girl in a red lehenga, and later, after she is bathed by her family women, she will don a shalwar-kameez.”-“Absurd,” retorted the Kauls. “She will wear a phiran just like all our brides, embroidered at the neck and cuffs. On her head will be the starched and papery tarang headgear, and the wide haligandun belt will be round her waist.” This standoff lasted three days until Abdullah and Pyarelal decreed that the bride would indeed wear her traditional garb, but so would Shalimar the clown. No tweed phiran for him! No peacock-feathered turban! He would wear an elegant sherwani and a karakuli topi on his head and that was that. Once the clothes issue had been resolved, the mehndi ceremony, a joint custom, was quickly settled. Then came the matter of the wedding itself and at that point the entire entente cordiale came close to collapse. To many Muslim ears, the other side’s suggestions were appalling. Blow a conch shell if you will, cried the Islamic aunts and great-aunts and cousins and so on, exchange all the gifts of nutmeg you desire, but a purohit, a priest, performing puja before idols? Sacred fire, sacred thread? The newlyweds to be treated as Shiva and Parvati and worshipped as such? Hai-hai. Such superstition would never do. The Kauls retreated in high dudgeon. All dialogue between the two households ceased. “Families,” sighed Firdaus Noman in despair, “are the narrow-minded, low-grade cause of all the discontent on earth.”
That night there was a full moon. Pachigam had divided into two camps, and long years of communal harmony were at risk. Then, on an impulse, the baritone Shivshankar Sharga came out into the main street and began to sing love songs, songs of the love of the gods for men, and of men for God, songs of the love between fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, songs of love requited and unrequited, courtly and passionate, sacred and profane. His daughters Himal and Gonwati, the tone-deaf duo, sat at his feet under strict instructions not to open their mouths no matter how much the music moved them. When he started singing the village was still in the grip of its plague of bad temper, and there were cries of “Shut up, we’re trying to sleep,” and “Nobody’s in the mood for these damned sentimental songs.” But slowly his voice worked its magic. Doors opened, lights came on, sleepers came in from the fields. Abdullah and Pyarelal met by the singer and embraced. “We’ll have two wedding days,” Abdullah said. “First we’ll do everything your way and then we’ll do it all again in the way we know.” A single shrewish aunt called out, “Why their way first?” but her carping cry was swiftly followed by a stifled gurgle, as her husband put his hand over her bad mouth and dragged her away to bed.
It was all settled. Pandit Pyarelal Kaul dug the aluminum box containing his wife’s wedding jewels out of the place in the backyard where he had buried them soon after her death and brought them to Boonyi lying wide awake in bed. “Here is everything that remains of her,” he told his daughter. “These jewels in this box and the greater jewel shining in this bed.” He left the box on the mattress, kissed her cheek and left. Boonyi remained wide awake, staring furiously at the nocturnal ceiling, willing the walls of the house to dissolve so that she could rise up into the night sky and escape. For at the very moment in which the village had decided to protect her and Shalimar the clown, to stand by them by forcing them to marry, thus condemning them to a lifetime jail sentence, Boonyi had been overwhelmed by claustrophobia and had seen clearly what she had been too deeply in love with Shalimar the clown to understand before, namely that this life, married life, village life, life with her father chattering away by the Muskadoon and with her friends dancing their gopi dance, life with all the people amongst whom she had spent every one of her days, was not remotely enough for her, didn’t begin to satisfy her hunger, her ravenous longing for something she could not yet name, and that as she grew older her life’s insufficiency would only grow harder and more painful to bear.