Dharma Karma
In New Jersey boutique, a marriage of cultures

Saab Gill-Sidhu, AS ’98, could hear a military band getting closer and closer to her wedding tent in India last March.

The approaching troops didn’t frighten her. They were a Punjabi Indian tradition she had dreamed about since she was a little girl.

And, although she couldn’t see him, she knew that her fiancé, Steve Sidhu, was following the band on a jewel-bedecked white horse.

A storybook Indian wedding was no sweat for Gill-Sidhu. She started writing A Comprehensive Indian Wedding Planner as a senior at UD and now runs an Indian-inspired bridal boutique and spa in Cherry Hill, N.J.

How did a Jersey girl who studied psychology and biology at UD wind up happy in a semi-arranged marriage, become the owner of a bridal boutique and learn the ancient Indian art of facial hair removal called “threading” to boot?

It all started with karma—Dharma Karma, the Indian boutique and spa Gill-Sidhu opened in her Cherry Hill, N.J.,  neighborhood in the spring of 2004.  Although she double-majored in biology and psychology, Gill-Sidhu says she always had a business bent, even before she married a professor of finance and marketing last year.

“I always wanted to have my own business, but you grow up thinking you should be a doctor or a dentist, which is the most stable way to go,’’ she says.

She became interested in the Indian wedding business when she realized she was familiar with many different ethnic and cultural traditions and her friends were always asking her questions about how to blend old-world and new-world elements.

Business in her boutique in an upscale Cherry Hill neighborhood strip mall is brisk, she says, with about a 50-50 split between people of Indian heritage and others. She says such movies as Bend It Like Beckham introduced Americans to Indian traditions. Most customers, she says, come looking for clothing a little different from that offered in the malls.

One family came in search of outfits for a bat mitzvah party; others want the custom-made wedding dresses she contracts from a vendor in India. According to Gill-Sidhu, the customer frequently comes in clutching a picture from a magazine, and the factory, a half world away, replicates the dress down to the smallest detail.

Kurthas (pronounced quart-taz), the traditional thin cotton or silk shirts that were known as embroidered hippie shirts in the ’60s, are perennial best-sellers. In India, each state has its own identifying embellishments, but here, customers just pick the colors and patterns they like best.

At Dharma Karma, a holiday sale could celebrate Christmas or the Indian festival of Diwali. That’s because Gill-Sidhu, British-born, moved to the United States at age 5 and marks the traditional British and American holidays, as well as the Indian holidays.

While Gill-Sidhu originally thought her UD courses would lead to a research job, she says her training comes in handy day-to-day at Dharma Karma as she watches romances and weddings unfold. “Sometimes, you feel like a psychologist,” she says. “You listen to people when they come in, get to know them and their problems. You become friends. It’s nice to meet people like that on a daily basis.”

Her own wedding started with an uncle’s chance meeting with an affable British professor one day in India. The uncle mentioned that he had a niece the professor ought to meet.

Following the Indian courting custom, Steve Sidhu called Gill’s father to ask his permission to phone his daughter. The couple talked on the phone, but the intercontinental connection was on-again, off-again, so it wasn’t until Sidhu returned to England that the couple began speaking weekly by phone. When he arrived in Philadelphia in December 2004, she showed him the town, and, by New Year’s Eve, they were engaged. They were wed in India in March 2005.

When it came to her own wedding, Gill-Sidhu instantly knew what was the most important aspect. “When you see so many weddings and you plan so many weddings, you realize what is important to you—having your family and your friends around you,” she says.

For now, the newlyweds travel back and forth for short and long visits, but they believe eventually they’ll both wind up back in Britain.

In the meantime, Gill-Sidhu is practicing what her professor spouse preaches. She hopes to expand her spa to include products that are blends of cosmetic science and Indian homeopathic cures.

“I’m especially interested in combining science and the naturalistic alternatives so you don’t have to get drastic beauty treatments all the time. We’re trying to find a natural way to reduce the fine lines and wrinkles,” she says.

 by Kathy Canavan