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wishes of an Indian girl matter? To even hope to marry a man of your choice would mean exercising an independence that in the arranged-marriage culture was unacceptable. Sarabjit would marry whomever her parents deemed appropriate. “Love” marriages, as Indians called them, were more common in liberal circles in the big cities, but arranged marriages were still the overwhelming majority. Even in Canada, Sikh girls who left India as toddlers felt the pressure of their culture. Rebelling against an arranged marriage in Punjab, for a girl like Sarabjit from a traditional village family,
was not even a remote possibility. It would mean disgracing the entire family in the eyes of the community, perhaps even bringing death upon herself.
    Sarabjit averted her brown eyes from Dhillon’s stare. Everyone seemed to call Dhillon by his nickname, Jodha , which means brave warrior. Sarabjit heard him speak in his rough Punjabi. The man was clearly uneducated, she could tell immediately.
    “I’m bringing a hundred friends to the wedding,” Dhillon declared in his rapid-fire cadence. “Look after them properly.” He said not one word to Sarabjit. She felt angry, claustrophobic. It was all closing in on her, out of her control. She locked her mother’s eyes in a cold stare. At the wedding, she saw the looks on the faces of her friends. They felt sorry for her, even though they knew their number would be up one day, too. Hopefully their parents would arrange marriages to more appealing men. Sarabjit’s closest friend, Pinky, leaned over and whispered, “Sarabey, what have you gotten yourself into? It’s all right. Everything’s going to be fine.”
    Dhillon on his wedding video

    Wedding guests paraded past Dhillon as he sat with Sarabjit. They handed him cash and jewels. Dhillon had told Sarabjit’s family to sweeten the dowry, and handed her parents, Gurjant and Ranjit, a wish list. He requested rings for his brother and father—even though Dhillon’s father had long been dead. Dowry is a serious business in India. When the dowry is found wanting by the groom or in-laws, the new bride is on occasion burned alive. “Dowry deaths” the local newspapers call them. The dowry paid to Dhillon included the rings, three bracelets, including a gold one for his mother, a neck chain, clothes. Dhillon told the parents he didn’t want stuff like a TV, fridge, or the family’s prized motorcycle. He could get those things in Canada. He preferred cash. The dowry he received totaled two Indian lakhs, or
200,000 rupees—about $9,000 Canadian. To Dhillon, the amount was modest; he could earn that much in Canada selling one used car. But for Sarabjit’s family, who owned a house and a patch of farmland, it was a massive expense; two lakhs is a small fortune in India. They borrowed money and, to help pay Dhillon, Sarabjit’s grandfather sold half of his farm and the family tractor. The family considered it an investment. They mortgage their lives to Dhillon, give him their daughter, and the payoff would be a move to Canada for all of them in the future through family reunification. The golden dream.

    Dhillon had taken his two young daughters, Aman and Harpreet—still grieving the loss of their mother—out of school in Hamilton to India for the wedding. At the wedding he was also accompanied by his friend, a man named Manjit Singh Sidhu, a hulking inspector with the Punjab state police who went by the nickname Dulla (pronounced doo-la), which meant “the groom” in English. Dulla always carried a revolver sticking out of his waistband for all to see. After the wedding, the families returned to the bride’s home in Panj Grain to pick up Sarabjit’s belongings. As Sarabjit got into the car with Dhillon to drive the two hours to his family home in Ludhiana, Dulla pulled the gun and fired several celebratory shots into the air.
    Dhillon and friend “Dulla” in wedding video

    In the middle of Ludhiana was Dhillon’s neighborhood,