by Bassam Sidiki

Created on: January 06, 2009

Excitement over, fun finished and we are all left to do just one thing to end it officially - go home. Here, I sit in an empty room with no other living creature but myself, unlike two hours before when the whole family was at our place celebrating my sister-like cousin's marriage.
I wonder, we Pakistanis have no opulent balls like the British do, no fancy tea parties like most Western neighbourhoods and no regular get togethers. It is us in our world, fighting, surviving, not caring to see who we have ignored, who we have forgotten. We Pakistanis get just one chance to meet up with our family - weddings, which are truly a source of sheer stimulation.

As the noisy fan spins belo the vacant room's ceiling, I realise what a significant part our families play in our lives. The bonds that unite, the ties that bind are unremovable even after we crumble to dust and enter the next world. Such as in our traditional Sindhi modified extended family structures, I will always be, say, your father's, uncle's, daughter's, late husband's aunt's son. You maybe living in New York or Beverley Hills riding a limosine, going to clubs, getting a first class education, buying and wearing Gucci, Armani, Prada, Calvin Klein, you name it. Whereas i might be a village boy from interior sindh working at my grandfather's mango orchard. But at the end of the day, both of us will be related by something peculiar called blood. Sadly but predictably, we both won't know of each other's existence.
Weddings, especially Sindhi weddings as I have experienced, with their unique rituals, catchy "Dane Pe Dana" songs and lavish ceremonies, are those special events where you from New York while I from Jacobabad meet, exchange views and realise the expansive structure of our family. Communication is an arduous hurdle, but we manage somehow with the use of intrepeters, writing or sign language. Gradually our relationship turns to friendship, our dispositions clearly seen, observed and recorded. Yet, if these dispositions are different or possibly diametrically opposite, our relationship will remain that of acquaintances connected by blood, nothing more.
In the midst of rose petals, sweets, 'Ajrak', Shararas, Kurtas, scarfs, drums, decorations and loud music we see new faces and soon get introduced, and befriend them. The closed family bud opens into a beautiful and pleasant rose, fresh with new ties of blood.
This circle of individuals has its own personalities. There may be one nuclear family envious of

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