Monsoon wedding is one of my favorite movies: it makes me happy, it relaxes me, it makes me sad and nostalgic, it makes me laugh. Most importantly, it always, always makes me want (and gets me) to dance.
This is my favorite scene for several reasons. The music, obviously, first and foremost and the general effortless dancing that seems to be more spontaneous than something contrived for the movie. It also makes me smile a little in remembrance for two reasons, both associated with my own wedding. The first is a little joke my family played on L.--we had him convinced, for a week or so, that he would have to wear some sort of turban like head gear for the [Persian] wedding ceremony (as an aside, we only had one; neither of us were keen on the dual ceremony deal and, let's face it, mine was much more interesting than a long and boring Catholic mass). The second one is that much to our surprise (even I wasn't anticipating it), the preferred music at the reception turned out to be the Iranian dance music CD I'd handed over to the DJ; people who wouldn't dance to any other music got up and did their best to keep up with my sister (who rocks at Persian dancing), me, and the rest of my family. It helped that one of my sisters-in-law was dating a guy from Georgia (the country, not the state), who apparently loved to dance and was infectious in his desire to do so. The best picture from my wedding shows about 3/4 of the guest on the dance floor in various states of twirling and gyrating and swaying and twisted in all sorts of shapes, while the remaining, shyer group are are all standing around, cheering and clapping and stamping or tapping their feet. (My sister-in-law's boyfriend is on his knees on the ground, by the way!). Everyone is laughing or smiling--no one more so than me, my parents, and my sister, standing together a little way back from everyone, taking it all in.
(The guy who developed our pictures later told us that he was envious of the photographer because it looked like we had a hell of a party. He wasn't wrong.)
Aaja Nachle - Monsoon Wedding
Tomorrow my mom goes in for her first quarterly scan since the last cycle of the treatment about 10 weeks ago. This is the all important scan, more so than the one they did immediately after the end of treatment, because the location of the tumor was still so raw and red from the radiation at that time, and it decreased the level of accuracy of the reading (which was good, but could not be considered conclusive). To say we are all holding emotions tightly in check and feeling a massive stress ball bouncing away inside us is an understatement. I just want to have another chance, soon, to have another purely happy moment like we did 8 and a half years ago, all four of us together, and it doesn't matter if there's no music or big crowd this time. I'll still do a little jig of joy, nonetheless.
