It Is Just Our Daughter's Marriage

It is just our daughter's marriage-
coming Sunday.
The boy is in the Gulf.

The groom, the father
and the mullah,
They join hands
and seal the fate
The mullah's words on matrimony,
drizzle on chicken fry
washed by mutton curry.

Dark chocolate and milky white paired
with just two
sovereigns of gold-
they flash through cracks of light;
you know
the oil fields have dried up.

The bride enters wide-eyed,
her brocade sari
splashed with hibiscus;
her rolls of jasmine white, visible
under the gaudy golden net;
the scent of her sister's wedding.

She was paraded
a gleam of gold
bought with mortgaged land-
an elephant decked for Pooram.
The hall booked with a relative's money,
decked with the best of flowers.

The boy is in the Gulf,
So, no problem.
It is just our daughter's marriage.