Gurjinder Basran's latest novel The Wedding isn't your typical love story — it's one about community
She spoke about The Wedding with Antonio Michael Downing on The Next Chapter
In Gurjinder Basran's The Wedding, she takes inspiration from Bollywood dramas to explore the lead-up to the lavish Sikh wedding between Devi and Baby.
Offering glimpses into the lives of the wedding party, guests and the event staff making it all happen, the novel is all about community, tradition and the union of two people.
Basran is a writer living in Delta, B.C. Her other novels include Everything Was Good-bye, the winner of the BC Book Prize and the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, Help! I'm Alive and Someone You Love is Gone.
Basran discussed the experience of writing The Wedding with Antonio Michael Downing on The Next Chapter.
How would you describe writing The Wedding?
It was fun, it did feel like a party, and I suppose that's suitable given the subject matter. But for me, often writing can be a painful reflection about things that are happening in my life.
But in this case, it was quite joyful to pop in and out of people's lives, given that there were so many perspectives.
Tell me a little bit about this choice to write from different perspectives throughout the book. It's a dizzying array of characters, all of them compelling. But why did you make that choice?
Well, I hadn't set out to write about so many of them, but what I had wanted to do was to turn the idea of a wedding on its head. Usually when you think about a wedding, you think about romance and the bride and groom.
But for me, when I've ever attended a wedding, it's been about me and it's been about my relationship with those people and my relationship with where I am in life.
I thought those stories were really interesting, so I wanted to centre the wedding as almost its own character and have everyone else and their lives orbiting around this event.
I wanted to centre the wedding as almost its own character and have everyone else and their lives orbiting around this event.- Gurjunder Basran
So you really get a sense of yes, the wedding and the event and will they or won't they? But you also get this lovely portrait of a community that's really struggling sometimes to be its best self, whatever that best self is for these characters.
Humour, drama, love consistently flow through this story, but how do you think your novel compares with a traditional romance?
I thought a lot about this because I think when you title a book The Wedding, you're kind of asking for that natural reaction that this is a love story, it's about marriage.
But for me it really became a love story about community, about the love that comes in friendship or long-lasting family relationships, parental love, brotherly love. It's all really important and I think we really discount these different types of love, that they sustain us much more so than romantic love.
So as I was writing, I realized, "Oh, this is a love story to the community that I've been part of."
This is a love story to the community that I've been part of.- Gurjinder Basran
You said in an interview with Vancouver's Massey Arts Society in 2022: "As a writer, I come to the page because I want to learn something." What did you learn writing The Wedding?
Well, I have to say, the original idea of writing a book about a wedding was a little bit of a joke for me. But as I started writing it, I realized, 'Oh, there's, there's just so much there.'
I had always been judgmental about Indian weddings. I thought they were too big, too extravagant. I thought they were wasteful and performative because there is so much keeping up with the next person. But I came to understand the value of celebrating each other and the value of parents wanting to celebrate their children. And the value of wanting to have a moment where you could be the centre of something and to celebrate these milestones that really give our life shape.
Although I'm still not necessarily one that would probably ever have a big wedding for my own children, I do now have an appreciation of why people do it. I'm happy to celebrate with them in whatever way they want to celebrate. So that was a big shift for me. That I can just go with it now, as opposed to sitting there in quiet judgment of it.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
