The day after they were married, Chachoo's new wife's family came over the next day for breakfast. They tell me this is a very traditional and common thing among all the ethnicities in Pakistan. My SIL tells me that the community she belongs to - she's Kutchi - it's expected that the groom's family will provide breakfast to the bride's family when they visit. She says that in her community, this morning-after breakfast is a really big deal and lots of family members stay at the bride's and groom's homes overnight so that they can attend this breakfast. In M's community - he's Bihari, remember? - it's not quite as big of a deal, and they expect the bride's family to bring the breakfast with them and feed the groom's family. She knew about this difference among their communities because another one of her family members had married outside of their Kutchi community, so her family did bring breakfast for us. They brought eggs, and a loaf of bread and cookies. There was more, but nobody can remember what else they brought with them. Also, no one else stayed overnight, so there weren't as many mouths to feed.
After the breakfast, the bride's family took the bride away! She was to spend the days back at her old home { but not the nights :) } This was new to me - at the last brother-in-law's wedding, the bride's family had come from breakfast but not taken their daughter back. My Kutchi SIL thinks perhaps this custom is common among those communities with a heritage stemming from the state of Gujarat - Bohri, Memon, Gujarati, Kutchi - she says everyone she knows that belongs to these communities do this thing where they take the bride back to her pre-marital home after the wedding. Usually it's for 4 or 7 days, until a combined family dinner at the bride's family's home called a chauthi (if it happens on the 4th day) or sithari (if it happens on the 7th day.) In our case, she just went back to her family home for two days - perhaps because we were under some time rush. Chachoo was to leave to go back to Saudi Arabia, where he was finalizing all of his affairs there for his upcoming move to America.
After the breakfast, and the bride's departure, the day got very boring and the time just crawled by. M's other brother and sister were gone because of their sick kids. Unfortunately for me, it was my birthday. At some point there had been a plan to have their wedding ON my birthday. I had lobbied pretty heavily against that! I didn't want to, in later years, have my birthday celebration subjugated to anyone's wedding anniversary celebration. (Because it was likely to happen, they DO live with us, and we all sometimes travel to Pakistan in December together, so we would be together at the time and have conflicting celebratory desires.) In the end, it was unavailability of the desired wedding venue - and not my protests - that saved my future birthday celebrations.
But as a result, my birthday was pretty darn boring. It was 9pm before I mentioned to M that it was kind of depressing that we'd spent the entire day puttering around the house, bored to tears, and nothing birthday-related had occurred. So M took me and the baby on a walk through the neighborhood - our first ever walk through the neighborhood, in fact. We walked a few blocks to the nearest big intersection and shopping area - kind of like a strip mall - and window shopped - meaning not buying anything. Except a cake, I think some caramel crunch cake.
Just a little while later, Chachoo (who had left to go to his new wife's home and bring her back for the evening) came back. And they'd bought presents! And a birthday cake! It said "Happy Birthday Bhabi" on it. After a little candle-blowing-out, cake cutting & eating, and perhaps a little sitting around and visiting, it was late and we all went to bed. We all needed our rest - the next day there was going to be yet ANOTHER wedding function!
You can barely read it, but it says "Happy Birthday" in blue and "Bhabi" in red. Happy birthday to me!
