17 Nov 2009
Well, tonight was quite an experience. I was invited to a Hindu wedding. A friend of Ashutosh’s. Now, let’s see if I get this right. The ‘wedding’ actually starts about two weeks before the main event. There’s various celebrations and parties. The bride and her family and friends have an all girls night. The groom has an all boys night. Then they have the wedding. Then they have the welcome home celebration after the reception.
On the way to the wedding, Ashutosh drove me past the bride’s parent’s house and then the groom’s parent’s house. They both lived in the same street about three houses away from each other. You can easily tell when a house is involved with a wedding. It’s normally lite up like a Christmas tree.
We arrived at the wedding around 10pm. We were just in time to tag along behind the wedding procession. Normally the groom and his family will walk a short distance to the venue. The groom is on horseback and dressed in traditional clothing. Wearing a crown. The horse was dressed up to. There was lots of music. (Eh, well, noise anyway. There was a band at the front of the procession but I think someone forgot the sheet music. )
Once we got to the reception area there were major fireworks. One set was coming out of a box that boasted 10,000 crackers. Apparently they all had to go of before the groom and his party could go to the next stage. And I can assure you, they did. I was right there.
As we were waiting, a member of the family (He seemed to be the person driving this part of the celebration) was throwing money into the crowd. I saw a couple of boys darting in to grab as much as they could. Turns out they were not involved with the wedding. They were just lads hoping to score on some cash. They were quickly chased away by some serious looking dudes with batons.
At the entrance to the venue, a ribbon had been stretched across the gate. The idea is that the brides sisters and girlfriends were at the barrier to negotiate the price of the groom’s admission. It was kinda funny really. They haggled there for a while. Some cheers went up, they haggled some more, then they finally came to an agreement and the ribbon was cut. The groom’s party were allowed into the venue.
Well, the one thing I wasn’t expecting was the number of people there. It seemed like the whole of Chandigarh was there. Well, maybe half of Chandigarh. They had all sorts of food to eat. Drinks of all types. The food was very nice. Probably the nicest I’ve had in India so far. In one corner of the venue was a stage where dancers were performing. That was quite spectacular. I even got to see Punjab rappers. Yep, rappers. Quite funny really. There was an area in front of the stage for people to dance. At the early stages of the night, there were plenty of little children dancing. Later, the floor was full. The loud speakers beside the stage were set to ‘earthquake’ volume. In fact, at one point, when I went over to take some pictures of the dancers, I noticed that my feet seemed to be sticking to the grass. I wondered if I had something on my shoes I might regret. On closer inspection there was nothing here. I could only conclude that the volume of the speakers was such that it was somehow affecting the grass. I would have said static, but I’m not sure that’s possible. (Might have to ask Lucaspedia)
The highlight of the evening for the guests was the bride entering. This was a little different. She was in a cabin and lowered into the waiting area by crane. (That sounds terrible. Makes her sound enormous.) No, she was some twenty feet up in the air and they lowered her slowly down to the waiting groom. Once she came out they both stepped up onto a rotating dais. There they exchanged garlands of flowers. Waited for the photographers to do their thing and proceeded to a throne like area where they were hand fed small snacks. Lots more photos.
The guests were then treated to a meal in the reception hall. Again all kinds of meals buffet style. And, yippee, icecream. I had two helpings. (You realise of course that it was forced upon me. I had to refuse twice before I gave in.)
By time we had finished nibbling it was close to midnight. Most of the guests were filtering away. Ashutosh told me it is not uncommon for these wedding to go to 4am in the morning. No sooner had we climbed into the car to go home and Aramon was asleep. It was quite amazing. He was so energetic up to that point.
18 Nov 2009
Ashutosh had told me to ring him when I wanted the driver to pick me up in the morning. I did but found that my phone wasn’t working. Some problem with the telephone company not authenticating my number. I pondered for a moment as to what to do. Then I remembered that there were some rickshaws in the market close to me. I haven’t tried one of those. So I wandered over and purchased a ride to work on one of the motorised three wheeled rickshaws. It was fun. The driver was older than my grandmother’s granddad but he still seemed sprightly enough. It was really cold. The mornings here are getting quite chilly. I don’t normally notice it as I’m out of the flat and straight into a car. The driver dropped me of on the other side of the square to where Touchstone was but didn’t mind the little walk. Fortunatley I had gone for a walk around the shopping area a few days before and it wasn’t hard to navigate my way there. The whole trip cost me 40 rupees. ($1.10)
I got home late tonight. Ashutosh only had one of his cars so I needed to wait until the driver was available. At least I got to do some drawing whilst I was waiting. I had been working on the computer all day and was getting sore arms. I was so tired when I got home, I just went straight to bed.