Placing faith in tradition
Couple anticipate arranged marriage will bring happiness
They call him Chef Peppino. He’s the German-raised, Americanized chef of an Italian restaurant that he owns with a Polish-born partner. But this morning, just like his father and his grandfather and the rest of his Indian-born relatives, Shingara Singh will marry a woman he has never met.
He has never spoken to his bride. He has never even seen her across a crowded room. He will not lay eyes on her until today’s ceremony.
The bride, Sarbjit Kaur, is 25 and lived at home with her family in the Philippines until Wednesday, when she arrived in Boston with two bags. She can say hello, and thank you, but knows little other English and smiled shyly yesterday answering questions while her arms and feet were laced with henna tatoos.
Singh trusts that she is the one: His family chose her.
“I like to believe my family,’’ he said, before acknowledging how much - and how little - they have told him. “She’s great. She’s nice. I don’t know how she looks, tall or shorter, heavy or skinny.’’
In a modern twist on an arranged marriage, the couple will marry this week like traditional Sikhs. And next week, they will celebrate like an American kitchen crew.
Singh’s restaurant, Da Vinci Ristorante in the South End, will host a June 28 wed ding celebration featuring Italian, French, and Indian food stations run by area chefs. The gregarious Singh has invited not only relatives and friends from other restaurants like Sage, Mistral, and Davio’s, but also the firefighters from the station next door and possibly hundreds of regular customers.
“We’re definitely making a huge celebration out of this,’’ said Da Vinci co-owner Wioletta Zywina. “The recession’s really getting to everybody.’’
So although some of Singh’s friends, especially the American born ones, joke that he is crazy to submit to an arranged marriage, they are optimistically putting their faith in him and in his own faith that love will follow marriage.
“He’s a people’s person; it really doesn’t matter that he hasn’t met the girl,’’ said his friend and fellow crossover Indian chef Ranveer Brar of BanQ in the South End. “I’m really sure this marriage will be a success.’’
Brar married someone he met, not an arranged marriage, but he said his culture remains comfortable with it. “Maybe back home, in the metropolitan areas, people have started going out dating and looking for partners, but in the small towns, the arranged marriage culture still works,’’ Brar said. “My mom and dad are from an arranged marriage and they’ve been married for 37 years now. That’s an indication that it definitely works.’’
Still, Singh seems especially Westernized to his friends. At 16, he moved to Germany, where he lived with an Italian family and worked in their restaurant, called Leonardo Da Vinci. He came to the United States in the 1990s and worked at the House of Blues before cooking at La Campania in Waltham, where Zywina was a waitress. They joked about opening a restaurant together until they did, in 2007.
Singh’s family tried to marry him off 10 years ago. He was not ready. “I want to do something with my restaurant,’’ said Singh, who is 42. “Now I’m all set. They find the girl. We have a good life.’’
There is some familial precedence for happiness: None of his relatives get divorced. His 21-year-old niece, Sandeep Kaur, an American-born college student who lives in Waltham, was married in India in December. She beamed when asked about her first impression of the groom her family chose for her.
“It was nice actually, better than I expected,’’ she said.
Kaur joined Singh’s bride (who, like most Sikh women, has the same last name) inside Aalok International, a shop in Waltham filled with glistening saris and thumping with Indian music. There, the bride had Mehendi, or henna, applied to her arms, hands, feet, and legs in elaborate patterns. The groom’s given name, Shingara, was painted onto her left hand. Singh’s niece explained that they want the temporary tattoos to be dark: The intensity of the color signifies how much her mother-in-law will like her.
“She’s happy, because this is what she wants because this is what her parents want,’’ Singh’s niece said. “She is excited to meet him, anxious, nervous.’’
Singh’s cousin’s wife knew the family of the bride from the Philippines; his brother went to meet her before the marriage was arranged based on their religion, values, and class.
Neither bride nor her groom could shower or change clothes for two days. Singh’s hands and face were covered with a yellow paste made with turmeric to ward off the evil eye. His clothes had been worn by another man before his wedding day. Singh said he didn’t know the lucky guy, but would pass the clothes down to another.
Zywina cannot imagine an arranged marriage for herself. But there is something logical about it, she believes. Single people turn to Internet dating, plugging desirable traits into a computer. “You trust a computer to go through your life rather than your family?’’ she joked.
The traits Singh hopes for in the bride he meets today would probably not be the first selected on match.com.
“I like the good heart. She takes care of me and takes care of my family,’’ he said. “Respect my family more than me. And she expects the same of me.’’
Stephanie Ebbert can be reached at ebbert@globe.com. 