Another Wedding

Last night, after finishing a late meeting about the web site up at TARA Center, where Jagori Grameen's office is, I discovered that it was already getting dark. Anya had told me many times that it wasn't a good idea to walk home alone after dark down that stretch of road, so I turned on the flashlight feature of my cellphone and hurried down the hill. Not far down, to my surprise, Devika and Gaytri greeted me coming back up the road. (Gaytri is on our agricultural team.) Gaytri's cousin was getting married that night, so she invited me to join her and Devika at the wedding feast.

It wasn't far at all from TARA Center. There must have been several hundred people packed into the courtyards of the housing complex. At the center of it all were the bride and groom. I have only ever been to the second day of a wedding, and then the couple have been out of sight, so this was something new to me. We watched the ceremony progress while waiting for our turn at the dham, the feast.

The couple sat underneath a small sort of tent pavilion made of painted wooden poles and decorated with tinsel, lights, wooden parrots. The bride was dressed in a fancy red and gold saalwar kameez, and her dupata was over her head and face the whole time like a veil. Her husband wore a pink turban, decked out with tinsel, and a paper vest sort of thing over the front of his shirt with even more colorful tinsel.

To my understanding, Indian's love tinsel. It's all over their Hindu shrines as well.

During the portion of the ceremony we watched, there was a sort of puja, worship. The girl's parents held a large conch shell over her head and prayed to the god Shiva while chant singing. All the while, she and her new husband knelt under the tent pavilion.

While we waited for the feast, I wound up sitting among a group of local girls, who struck up a conversation with me in English. Seeing it as a good chance to practice my Hindi, I stubbornly stayed out of my native language. The girls, however, seemed to think I know more Hindi than I do, but on the whole, it was fun to talk and practice with them.

The feast was an excellent one, with some of the best dham food I have had since being here. I'm certainly getting better at eating with my fingers, as I was able to keep up with all of the new courses. After the meal, Gaytri took us into the house to see the bride where she sat surrounded by some women friends or family. She was very pretty but very young.

After having eaten our fill, we all headed home. Devika and I were both glad to have someone to walk home with after dark.

Devika told me that the wedding feast differs greatly around the country. In Delhi, it is usually held in hotels or reception halls on long tables with real plates, rather than on the ground with leaf plates and people serving out of baskets. The food is also very regional, so what I eat up here wouldn't be eaten in Delhi or elsewhere.

Wedding season, in this region, has been going since October but it is now coming to an end. I am told that the weddings going on now are the last, and there won't be any more until this June. I believe that the times of year are designated as auspicious through some kind of astrology. This time of year, you can hardly walk down the road without spotting a tent archway or three that signifies a wedding or hearing the blaring music of a wedding band.

It certainly is exciting, but with wedding season over, things will get much quieter. As an added bonus, all of my coworkers are more likely to be around more regularly and not at some friend or relative's wedding. Things will slowly go back to normal.