To say I was badly briefed would be something of an understatement. He had been vague and low-key about our forthcoming wedding, and from the safety of my busy job, and our tiny two-bedroom flat in North London, it was easy to accept brief answers to my questions.Nothing to worry about! They’ll love you! It’s all taken care of, no preparation required, just be yourself!Not that any of this was untrue, it just didn’t tell the whole story. I didn’t realise at the time, but this was the first hint of what it means to marry into a different culture. It’s not just that I do things this way and you do things that way, and it’s not food, or clothing, or language (though it is, also, all of these). Stepping into a different culture means coming up against many lifetimes of hard-won understanding and deeply held assumptions, a complex web of relationships and roles, a vast lexicon of mannerisms and gestures and ways of being. These are so established, that for the participants, there is no longer awareness that things could ever be different. Embed this in the geography, history and climate of a faraway country and you have the beginnings of mutual bafflement on a grand scale.Yet here I was, jetlagged and queasy from antimalarials, elaborately dressed by women who were kind and warm and completely unknown to me. Here I was, seated cross-legged on the ground in midsummer temperatures in winter, draped in marigolds and surrounded by vivid colours and a thousand strangers. I barely recognised myself, and opposite me, a man I hardly knew. Was this alien creature in white silk and red turban really the same person with whom I’d shared pizza and red wine on Friday nights with Frasier and Friends? Or were we two strangers, finally revealed to each other, and so entirely unalike that nothing but disaster could follow this huge, fabulous wedding?The panic must have shown on my face, because the stranger opposite me caught my eye. He smiled, just a little, and reached across to touch my hand, and I remembered his last comment before getting on the plane.It’s ok. We’ll figure it out.