Resilient loves
In cinematic tradition, when far-flung families gather for a domestic celebration the air is pervaded with the sound of rattling skeletons. Scandalous revelations are made, suppressed feuds liberated. What really happened between grandma and granddad and the lodger from Poughkeepsie back in 1942 is at last exposed. For dramatic purposes, happy families are usually of little use.
Monsoon Wedding includes numerous such secrets, but they are ultimately contained within a life-affirming, cheerful story about the arranged marriage of Aditi Verma to Hemant Rai, an engineer from Texas. The Vermas are Punjabis living in Delhi, although some family members have scattered as far afield as the Gulf states and Australia. The film begins, significantly, in a television studio with a noisy debate on the rift between the modern world and traditional values. This debate is a general theme of the movie and central to one of the plot lines.
The debate is chaired by Vikram, a trendy media figure who is also Aditi's former boss and former lover. Aditi dropped him when she realized he would never leave his wife. On the rebound, she agrees to marry Hemant. She is then confronted with the worst fear of a traditional Indian bride--What if her husband and family discover that she has been less than virtuous?--along with the conscientious dilemma of a modern woman--Ought she not to confess the affair to Hemant on the grounds that he has a right to know about her past?
