The Great Indian Wedding Day

A long post about the famous wedding! Also, cheers to Gary, Gar and Kirst for the notebook from whence all these thoughts issue.

My Uncle K said he’d come by at 9:30-10:00 the morning of the wedding to pick us up and take us to the house for the wedding. But at 9:30 we were still asleep in bed, exhausted from our travels, so he said to freshen up and get dressed and he’d come back.

An hour and a half later, we were dressed and ready. It was already blazing hot outside. We drove back to the house and this time got a better picture of the village in day light. We found that the town where the hotel was gives my mother’s family its surname. But she actually grew up in a village outside that town and it was truly a village. It was mostly low huts with palm leaf roofs but in the daylight we saw there was also a lot of construction and a lot of concrete and brick houses too. My uncle’s house in the village is just a summer house built on spare family land. No one lives there most of the time because Uncle K lives in Nagpor and Uncle S lives in Hyderabad. The house is brick and stucco, painted pale pink. The stairs are painted red and the banister is pale blue.

When we drove up, there was a large crowd gathered under a palm leaf canopy on the driveway. We walked up to many stares. The people in the village had been told my mom (their old neighbor who went to the US) was coming to visit with her children so we were considered the guests of honor.

My mom saw me and immediately pounced on me and made me put on an Indian dress instead of my skirt and t-shirt. I agreed mainly because I didn’t want to offend anybody so early in the visit.

We came outside again and they were giving my Uncle S the “holy bath”. the groom sits with a nephew or younger relative (don’t know why) with no shirt and people come one by one and sprinkle over his head three times a mixture of rice and turmeric powder which turns his scalp all yellow. Then they tell him their good wishes for his future. The crowd of people all sing and chant a loud song while this is going on. Matt and I put the rice on his head together, but awkwardly. Also then close family members will rub his chest, back and face with a turmeric paste which makes him all yellow. Then he needs to wash it all off and put on a new set of clothes. It’s a sort of rite of passage during marriage.

There were all sorts of wedding preparations going on. Adjacent to the house is a big field which must also belong to my uncle. Under one big tent there were about thirty people cooking and preparing a huge meal. My uncle said when there is a wedding in a village like this, the entire village is invited and he expected 750 people to come. They put two giant banners on either side of town to announce the wedding and invite everyone. On the other half of the field they were setting up chairs and a raised platform where the ceremony would take place. They decorated the whole platform with banners, and streamers and coated everything with bunches of fresh flowers.

There had been a lot of debate during the planning stages as to the cost of this wedding and it quickly became clear that they must have spent quite a lot to prepare all this.

All day there was a steady stream of new people to meet. One thing that made it difficult is that we were always introduced to others (as my mom’s daughter and son-in-law) but they were never introduced to us so we frequently didn’t know who we had just met and had to piece it together later. It also didn’t help that hardly anyone spoke English. Uncle K and his sons did pretty well and Uncle R and his wife who live in Bournemouth and their kids, plus Uncle S and my immediate family. With everyone else we either spoke through translators or else I listened to the Telagu (the language of Andhra Pradesh—this state in India) and translated into English for Matt who laughed or nodded as appropriate. I understand Telagu but can’t speak it.

Sometime around 1PM my brother and sister joined us at the house. They had stayed a few days with my father’s relatives and came back in time for the wedding. They seemed much more well-adjusted to the conditions and the climate. I didn’t know how they could be so calm and accepting of the state of things around them. At the time I think I was still in shock over the state of things. It’s just a whole different standard for cleanliness here. We’re not in danger of disease or anything serious, just a lot of personal discomfort. Since we first got here though I have been doing better.

Just before the start of the wedding, my mom gave Matt a traditional Indian men’s outfit to wear. It’s just a pair of thin cotton pants and a long thin tunic shirt. It’s supposed to be very cool and comfortable. Matt had brought a suit and was happy to try something cooler and to fit in better. I had brought a very nice linen dress myself but just before the wedding I was attacked by about ten aunties and had a sari wrapped around me. It really was a pretty sari, dark blue with a real silver print but it was not very practical, as I’ll explain later.

The wedding was supposed to begin at 5PM and there was a loud band of woodwind instruments playing on the driveway. Five came and went and the bride’s family did not come. We all waited. Crowds and crowds of people covered the field and came onto the house porch to introduce themselves to my mom. All the little children in the village wanted to shake Matt’s hand because he was foreign and so tall. It began to look like rain. Finally at 7PM the bride and her family came and the ceremony began. The bride wore a traditional red sari and was covered with gold jewelry and the groom wore a western style suit and tie. We all sat out on the chairs but the ceremony was in Telagu and I wasn’t able to understand most of it. It was a joint Hindu-Christian ceremony. The bride is Christian. She is a doctor like my uncle. Uncle S is some 15 years younger than my mom, that’s why he’s getting married now while my mom has grown children.

I also met for the first time my father’s brothers and their wives. They told me when I was little I used to see movies and come home and sing the songs and dance. That I used to ask my uncles to buy me bangles in the shops. It is nice to know these stories but it underscores the fact that keeps coming up for me, that that girl was another person in another lifetime.

Anyway back to the wedding. Eventually it started to sprinkle and once it started it just kept picking up and soon the thunder and lightening started and soon it was all a mess. Everyone left the ceremony field and sought shelter. No one has umbrellas here. The mud was epic. But on the platform the priest kept going and so did the loud speakers. Everyone was getting soaked and my sari was about an inch deep in mud. I kept having to hold it up and people kept stepping on it. Finally the priest abandoned the platform and the couple were moved onto the porch of the house. All the carefully made decorations were abandoned. No sooner was the couple seated in some wicker chairs on the porch when… The electricity went out and the entire neighborhood was in pitch blackness.

Due to what they call “load sharing” the village only has electricity certain parts of the day. There are regular scheduled outages (example 4PM-6PM every other day) and occasionally random ones. I think the videographer was aware this might happen though because he had a massive spotlight attached to his camera and the ceremony was able to continue through various interruptions, power outages and so forth. Matt and I sat with my mom in the garage and she unequivocally called it a disaster and a waste and blamed it all on the bride. But at least it went ahead anyway. Everyone had been waiting a long time for their dinner. It was by then almost 10 o’clock. Obviously it would be very difficult to seat and serve 750 guests at once, so they set up a long row of tables and people ate in shifts when they were hungry. It had pretty much stopped raining but everywhere was still a muddy mess. Matt and I ate with my father’s family because they had to leave again soon. It was so much food! Matt go the vegetarian options. It’s pretty to be a vegetarian in India since so many people are anyway. At a wedding you have to accommodate vegetarians.

It was pretty late and dark out. There were a million crickets out and they kept jumping up into the folds of my sari so I couldn’t see them to bat them away. Some of the crickets were HUGE, the size of small birds. We found over the week this was entirely typical. Crickets come out at night. They’re not dangerous, only disgusting and since the house is not air conditioned all the windows and doors are opened and they get everywhere, even into your suitcases and backpacks.

The wedding wound down around 11:30PM (no dancing) and everyone was too busy to drive us back to the hotel so we slept in the AC room overnight. The AC room is the one room in the house with AC. When Indian people say they have AC, they mean for just one room in their house, usually a bedroom where they keep their foreign guests. My uncle had gotten an air conditioner solely for Matt because he didn’t think Matt could handle the heat.

My sister Bernice stayed with us in the AC room and we had a good talk about what had gone on before we got there. She was already in her second week of being in India. She told us that the first two days she spent in India, my Uncle K dragged them all around Hyderabad in the intense heat and made Bernice eat all sorts of mysterious stuff. And when she said she didn’t want to he asked why did she bother to come to India if she wasn’t going to try new things. “But,” she told us, “I showed them, by throwing up and passing out from heat stroke.” She advised us to drink a lot of water and not “hold it in” so to speak. We also quickly learned the best policy is to go to the bathroom frequently and promptly when needed.

The next morning we had to wake up at 6AM to go to church!