“You just watch when Monty gets married,” he’d said as he brushed away his tears, “Then I’ll really cry.”

This was vintage Sher Alam.

Over the years, in multiple retellings of this incident, which happened when the eldest of our four siblings got married, the love and genuineness that Sher Alam, self-titled as Baati, the baby of our group, wanted to convey has never been lost amidst the laughter and mirth.

As sisters and brothers-in-law, nieces and nephews came, they all developed their special equations with ‘Baati Dada’. I won’t lie; when the announcement of Sher Alam’s wedding finally came, there were definitely mixed emotions. 

On the one hand, there was elation, excitement and curiosity even as to how the erstwhile kid, who, until recently, often used to jostle with nieces and nephews for the last slice of pizza or the remote, would take to marriage. And there was also trepidation. Not to toot my horn, but while I had strived to maintain the same level of goofiness post-marriage with my partners in crime, there had been some changes and activities such as all-night one-tip one-hand and movie binges, which had to be curbed. With Sher Alam’s upcoming nuptials, there was panic within the ranks regarding the last bastion of goofiness. 

While there were breakdowns – we’re all human after all – in which one niece or nephew or even your’s truly would rush to a corner to wail over the loss of ‘Independent George’, on the whole, I think we managed to put up a good show.

Homecoming, while always eagerly looking forward to the event, was an especially poignant occasion this time around as we welcomed a new member to our family. The usual tradition of watching ‘Zindagi na milegy dobara’ during each homecoming was multiplied threefold as we watched it the first time with the newlyweds. Then again, when I joined my niece and nephew, who had to leave for Lahore to attend classes. And then a third time in the morning to make up for the bits we’d missed when we all fell asleep. To atone for our mistake, we also watched ‘Dil Chahta Hai’. 

Of course, there were some casualties as well, such as the relegation of Dutch, the vampire-trapped-in-the-body-of-a-cat, to the terrace. But it was a moment of happiness. For years, Dutch had terrorized grandmother and father, brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews with impunity. For it to be suddenly exiled due to the welcome addition of Amna to the household was a healthy omen. Along with Dutch, there are some other unwelcome hangers-on, which all of us hope will soon be jettisoned.

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In between, there were other family staples, such as a five-a-side football match between the empty chairs and sofas on the night before the wedding. The no-holds-barred ‘joota chupai’ in which the youngest members of the family stepped up to the plate and refused to let their mamoon part with his squished-in joota. Legend has it that this was the first time in Bandial that a joota came back with its sole held high. Then there was the ‘Kaun Banega Crorepati’ phone call at three on the night of the wedding, and the groom couldn’t overcome his giggling fit as Pakistani Amitabh asked him a million-dollar question. This was followed by a post-valima dumb charade all-nighter in which B-grade movies were gold dust, and the more obscure and obscene the title, the better.

In the end, nobody cried at Sher Alam’s wedding. Well ok, maybe Dutch did, but who cares, I still have the scar where it scratched me so boo-hoo. The point is that we all let our hair down and partied like it was the end of an era. And the beginning of a new tomorrow.
Wishing the newlyweds lots of love and happiness.
Mushi mushi, my bwaii.