On The Couch: The Engaged Couple

Himadri Chaudhary and Onkar Bapat are planning their December wedding with reception ceremonies on two continents.

Chaudhary is a senior auditor at Axiall Corporations. Originally from Gujarat, India, her family immigrated to Canada in 2002 when she was 13. Her fiancé, Bapat is a senior fund accountant at Citi Bank. His family came to Canada from Mumbai, India in 2006 when he was 17.

Like many early-generation immigrants, Chaudhary and Bapat have a strong blend of Canadian and South Asian culture. You can hear the ethnic mash-ups in their accents, and see it in their mannerisms, the respectful way they address Chaudhary’s parents and the welcoming way they host their guests.

The couple is spreading their wedding across three different venues. The ceremony will take place in Gujarat on December 20. For the service, 150 of Bapats’s guests will travel by rented train bogies from Mumbai, where they will meet five thousand of Chaudhary’s friends and relatives. The couple and their guest will then travel almost 700 kilometers to Bapat’s hometown, Mumbai for the first reception. The second reception will be in March 2016 in Toronto, for friends and family that couldn’t make the trip.

The two met in University, but did not start dating until years later.

“I was working at TD and she dropped by once or twice, then we started talking on Facebook. One thing led to another and I asked her out,” Bapat says.

They were engaged eight months after, Bapat proposed on a snowy night in March 2015. He took Chaudhary for a secluded walk along a Lakeshore and Bapat popped the question. Chaudhary says she didn’t see it coming.

“We had been dating for eight months but to be honest, eight months didn’t feel like eight months. It felt longer,” Bapat says. “I think the big thing was we were comfortable with each other, we liked each other’s company,” Chaudhary says.

Maintaining their culture and family values is one of the couple’s main priorities. Both Chaudhary and Bapat come from traditional, tight-knit families, and they consider the bonds they share with their relatives sacred. It’s why they decided to adhere to tradition, and live separately until their wedding day. It is also why they believe that being from different parts of India is one of their biggest obstacles.

“When I was in India, I didn’t think about things this way,” says Nishthaben Chaudhary, the mother of the bride-to-be. Born and raised in Gujarat she explains how rigid state boundaries are back home.

“We married within the same class (state). I am Chaudhary, my husband is Chaudhary, we didn’t marry people from another class. But when we came here, we met so many different people, so many good people and now I can accept it,” she says.

To ease this union, the pair has even started learning each other’s native language.

“A lot of our family in India don’t speak English, so when I visited Mumbai it was a bit of a culture shock,” Chaudhary says. “Now, we’re at a point where we can understand each others language, and that all happened in two years. So maybe I’ll be speaking another language in another two, three years.”

Bapat thinks that with the rate Chaudhary is going, she’ll be fluent much sooner than she thinks.

On the big day, Chaudhary and Bapat want to merge not just their families, but also their customs. Like her mother, Chaudhary wants a traditional Indian wedding, which includes both Gujarat and Mumbai culture.

“In terms of wedding rituals, they have a few things that are different to what we have,” Bapat says. “How it works usually in Gujarat is everyone follows the brides rituals, the groom’s side goes to them. But in Mumbai, the grooms have a couple of rituals that we do on our own. It’s really a slight difference.”

The two are optimistic that both families will embrace their wedding.

“I hope our relationship brings together two cultures,” Bapat says.

#OntheCouch #culture