rootless

now that talk of a wedding swirls around our lives, i (not ravi) am stumped with the wedding ceremony.

i.am.rootless.

when you grow up with an overbearing father who tries to instill "culture" into your lives when he himself does not quite hack it as well, it just falls through. i grew up thinking i was malay although people always asked if i were this/that, basically anything but malay.

then i found out my mother is chinese.

then i found out my father himself isn't quite malay with a practically portuguese father from a predominantly portuguese-majority area of malacca, and punjabi mother.

where does that put my brother and i?

what are we?

my identity card states "malay" (for some political reason) and the "binte" in my name reflects the history of the malays who found it easier to adopt the arabic culture than to keep their own - like as though arabising one's self made one more muslim than one is in one's heart.

truth be told, i feel more like a "binte" than a "malay" regardless of my current racial ambiguity which clearly shows we are not malays. i am more muslim in some aspects than i am anything else. but i cannot be pretentious. the only reason i feel more muslim than anything else is because my body submits to the law and order ordained by He who created it all. and as islam means submission to God (and literally peace) and my engineered heart ticks according to the blueprint designed by He, then i am a muslim.

but religion is not what i wish to talk about today.

one thing is for sure - we will go through the nikah, a marriage contract signed and 'recognised' by God, whatever that means.

then - i am lost.

i am absolutely lost.

when ravi used to tease that our kids must go for tamil dance classes and learn tamil because i was cultureless - i realise now that there's some truth in that.

he is right.

i am cultureless.

i'd spent years dismissing malay culture (even when i thought i was a malay), ridiculing beliefs that seemed contradictory to the basic doctrines of islam but passed off as islamic beliefs - i rejected a lot of it though i respected some aspects of malayanism.

my father saw signs of this even when i was studying at the convent as a pre-pubescent child. but you cannot teach a child what you yourself do not possess. a child learns more from watching than nagging.

as i grew older, it only got worse. suddenly most of what the malays believed e.g. plucking your eyebrows would send you straight to hell was just fucking stupid to me. why in the world would a being as great, as infinite as God give two shits about anyone plucking their eyebrows? worse - why is this in the same class as murdering an unarmed man who is not dangerous to you?

before i knew it, i was barely 18 and had already rejected this subculture like as though it wasn't worthy of great, big Me.

and now, i find myself, rootless.

what am i? portuguese? chinese? indian?

what wedding ceremony do i hold? portuguese/chinese/indian? malay?

is it wrong to adopt a culture although technically, it isn't yours?

which culture in the world today isn't actually a subculture of the world culture? everything is adopted. even the malay culture of "hantaran"s and henna-painting were adopted from the indians/moroccans/etc.

but still, i cannot swallow wearing malay costumes, sitting on a dias and looking pretty for 4 hours while trying not to break out into beads of perspiration that would stain my pretty little malay costume that's too small, hard and uncomfortable anyway.

and instead, what do i think of?
1. a nikah and kenduri for family and closest friends only
2. a wild reception complete with hors d'oeuvres , wine, herradura tequila, happy music, dancing and laughter for friends only. i could never be this free with my parents or the out-laws around (or drink like a whore).

see, the first is out of respect for my parents and whichever family member who might feel offended they were never invited to a wedding dinner.

and the second is something i would actually like to have. i cannot imagine an un-fun dinner where i, as the bride, am the most uncomfortable person at my own wedding just because i am worried everyone else is not having fun.

the wedding planner has been anointed, the date more-or-less set - now the only thing left is to decide the singaporean wedding ceremony.

and i am stumped.