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Here Comes the Bride

Pulitzer winning writer marries fellow American in Indian wedding

Jhumpa Lahiri.

By Chandra Banerjee/AP

With the chanting of Vedic hymns and the blowing of conch shells, Pulitzer prize-winning Indian American author Jhumpa Lahiri married fellow New Yorker and journalist, Alberto Vourvoulias, in a traditional Hindu ceremony on Jan. 15.

Only family members of the bride and groom and close friends were invited to the wedding. Lahiri had made known her wish that the marriage would be a “very personal affair.”

Indian newspapers have been carrying stories about Lahiri ever since she won the Pulitzer in 2000 for her book, Interpreter of Maladies, a collection of short stories mainly about Indian immigrants in New England and her childhood home in Calcutta.

At a press conference last week in Calcutta, capital of the eastern Indian West Bengal state, Lahiri expressed surprise at her sudden celebrity status, but refused to answer questions about the wedding ceremony, saying she wanted it to be a private event.

Throngs of journalists, photographers, television crews, fans and curious onlookers waited in vain outside the gates of the sprawling house in a south Calcutta suburb where the wedding was held.

However, relatives who attended the wedding said Lahiri was dressed in a traditional red bridal sari, with red and white flowers in her hair and gold jewelry she had inherited from her grandmother.

Vourvoulias, a journalist with Time magazine in New York, wore a typical Indian dhoti or sarong with a silk kurta, or shirt, and hand embroidered shoes.

One of Lahiri’s uncles told journalists that the wedding was a traditional Bengali one, with priests reciting prayers and chanting verses from Hindu texts as the couple sat in front of a ceremonial fire. Female relatives blew conch shells to mark the auspicious moment when the couple walked around the fire to solemnize the marriage.

Lahiri, 33, born in London of Indian parents, went to school and university in the United States.