Indian Wedding

Friday was wedding day! Not for Peggy and me, but for Shobha Acharya and Nagendra Kamath. Shobha worked for Peggy when we first arrived in Pune, and now she was getting married to an arranged husband, to be followed by a brand new life in Dubai, where Nagendra works.

We gussied up at the hotel, Peggy in her new Salwar Kameez, Jody and me in our fancy Kurtas. Jody had gone the extra yard while in Pune to buy a very flashy gold scarf to wear with his costume, so even though he was feeling way under the weather, he gamely decided to forge ahead and attend the wedding. Being who I am, I drolly suggested that we would be the only men at the wedding in traditional Indian garb, but I must say, when we finished getting duded-up, we were a splashy trio.

On the way to the wedding we were treated to a bus race. This was not an exhibition nor an official sporting contest, but rather a real-life struggle between two crazed Indian bus drivers who were attempting to get to the next bus stop first. They managed to force a few vehicles off the road before the red bus being driven by idiot number 1, veered in front of the blue bus piloted in equally stupid fashion by idiot number 2. And why would these “professional” drivers be engaged in such shenanigans? Babu explained. In Karnataka, the buses are private vehicles, operated by drivers who are on strict commission and get paid a percentage of the total fares collected. This behooves the wackos to drive in an extremely dangerous manner to try to get to as many stops as possible before the other buses. They fly into the stop, slam on the brakes, hustle everyone in and blast off again as quickly as humanly possible.

This stupid approach to public transportation results in a high mortality rate amongst bus passengers in India, especially during night time hours when exhaustion adds another horrible dimension to the deadly mix.

Some of the buses we saw carrying on were called sleepers. They were a bit taller than a normal bus but not true double-deckers. But they do have a second floor inside. There are sleeper compartments on that level, with each compartment going from one side of the bus to the other, but only about four feet in total height. I’m not sure how anyone could sleep in a bus than was continually careening at top speed from bus stop to bus stop, but apparently some locals are able to accomplish that miracle.

Once we arrived at the wedding chapel, my earlier dour prediction was amply rewarded. Although Jody and I were not the only men in native dress, we were quite definitively in the minority. And I can proudly report that I was the only man there in curly-toed Mojadis. Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that I am the only man in the entire country who at this very moment in time is in possession of such a silly pair of shoes.

Overdressed though we were, we had a grand time nonetheless. The wedding invitation was somewhat inscrutable, but it very prominently displayed the time that we assumed the wedding would start: 12:18 pm. Using an uncommon time or number like that is one of my favorite jokes, but in this case the time was not selected in jest. It was deemed the most auspicious time, astrologically speaking, for these two young souls to be joined in matrimony.

Lucky for Peggy she is married to me. Her tendency is to be right on time in the best case, while I err so far in the other direction I would have awakened God early on the first day of creation to get the show on the road. That’s my long-winded way of saying that we arrived at the wedding a good 45 minutes before it was scheduled to start at 12:18. Surprise! It was already under way. None of the really important stuff had happened, but there were people seriously chowing down on breakfast at the rows of long tables that had been set up in a side room, while various personages were strewing marigold petals, sprinkling water and lighting incense on the stage that contained a beautiful arch, colored strictly with a wide variety of local flowers.

We had been assigned two handlers, both close relatives of Shobha, and they immediately ushered us into a back room where Shobha was gathered with her mother and a few other wedding participants. She looked radiant in her beautiful wedding Sari, with her long braids interwoven with red, white and gold flowers and some serious Mende (henna “tattoos”) on both hands and arms. Even though none of us knew Shobha particularly well, we were once again playing the roles of Angelina, George and Brad, and we were one of the main attractions at the wedding. Shobha was hyperventilating a little, but she had psyched herself up for this and she was ready to get it done.

We retreated to the chairs on the main floor and watched the ceremony. Even though our two handlers explained most of what was going on to Peggy and Jody, I was too interested in the reactions of the crowd to follow much of it. The wedding ceremony that took place on stage was pretty incidental to most people in the audience. There was lots of chatting, waving, wandering about, snacking and rubber-necking, but not all that much attention to the official rituals. Shobhas’s father and Nagendra’s father would wave at people from the stage and even come down and chat with some folks from time to time.

The only time that everyone pretty much focused on the actual wedding was at 12:18, when Shobha’s father released his daughter to her new husband (shedding a few tears as he did so), then the couple was symbolically tied together with string and finally exchanged garlands.

The next thing we knew we were ushered to one of the long tables where we sat down to participate in the wedding feast. First we were given the south Indian equivalent to a paper plate – a large banana leaf. Then a man came rushing down the aisle between the tables squirting water on each banana leaf. We were expected to rub the water all over the top surface of the leaf, then pour the water off, leaving the leaf fresh and clean for the feast.

Next came a torrent of food, slung in individual servings onto our plates by young men carrying tubs of chow. I can’t tell you what any of it was except for Gobi Manchurian and Raitha. Raitha is a creamy coleslaw type chutney, heavy on red peppers while Gobi Manchurian consists of cauliflower sections, dipped into some type of spicy red dough then deep fried. If marrying vegetables was not considered immoral (and I was a Mormon), I would marry Gobi Manchurian because it was the best Indian dish I’ve ever tasted.

Jody was still struggling mightily with gut problems, but he felt obligated to show some interest in the many items that were slung on our banana leaf plates, so he did his innards even more damage by trying to be a good wedding guest.

In true Indian style, the wedding feast was carried out without any silverware whatsoever and no napkins or towels. Everything has to be managed by your right hand, and no matter how sticky or slippery the food is, there is no way to clean that hand until you’re done eating, at which point you repair to one of many public washbasins to wash your hands and then dry them on… Well, actually, there is nothing to dry them on, so you just kind of wave them around in the air for a while until they are only slightly less damp. Dryness in India is not a highly prized state of being.

Speaking of food, although food prices in both groceries and restaurants is much cheaper than in the US, the prices have risen more than 17% in the past year, and that, as you can imagine, is making the tough life of the exceptionally poor here even more difficult.

When we finished eating we were dragged up to the stage where Shobha and Nagendra were having some of the approximately 3 million wedding photos taken. We were positioned beside them and had our mugs snapped with the happy couple.

And then the festivities were over. While some Indian weddings last 3 fun filled days, this one was over in less than 3 hours. Peggy would later make a sophisticated Cricket joke by comparing the traditional wedding to a Test Match whereas the one we had just attended would be closer to the new 2020 format.

Jody faded on the ride back to the hotel. The stomach disruption he was experiencing would lay him pretty low for the next 36 hours. But Babu was in a good mood and wanted to learn more about the USA, so he peppered us with questions, starting with one that is difficult to answer: why does the US have the largest prison population in the world? We certainly did not want to leave the impression that the US is an exceedingly dangerous place, but the real reason is certainly open to many interpretations. We then talked about slums, race and the various disadvantaged groups in our country who have had great difficulties breaking out of the molds set by their circumstances.

We emphasized that most of the US is very safe, but there were some places, that for lack of a better word we labeled “slums”, that could be very dangerous and should be avoided. Just then we drove by a common site all over India – a tent camp, composed of many make-shift tents, built from scraps of cloth, tarps and black plastic. I pointed at it and said “slum”. Babu immediately corrected me: “Not slum, homes for working people!” Wow – that was not what I expected. Living conditions that look like the worst in the world are not considered slums by Indians, but rather working class abodes.


Babu then went on to relay a sad story about his own place in the world. Although castes are not supposed to hold sway in India, they do. Everyone knows what caste he or she belongs to and they can pretty much figure out the caste-level of most of the Indians they meet in their day-to-day activities. It seems that the Indian constitution contains a form of affirmative action for the lowest caste (historically called the untouchables). Apparently one of the policies called out by the constitution is to award certain rare and much valued university seats to the lowest caste even if they have lower test scores than an applicant from a higher caste. Babu was the victim of that exact program. Whereas he had good school marks and a credible SAT-like test score (in the 74th percentile according to him), he was denied a seat in favor of an untouchable who had scored in the 63rd percentile. The fact that he knew these very specific details was interesting, but the reality of the story was heart-breaking. Instead of becoming a professional, an educator or a civil servant, Babu was shuffled to the life of a car driver by a system that by his estimation is very unfair. Like Ashraf, he has accepted his lot begrudgingly, dedicating himself to seeing that his children have chances that were just flat not available to him.

Back at Paradise Island, the hotel restaurant did a fair impression of any of the street hawkers by calling our room to try to wheedle us into coming to lunch. Having just eaten at Shobha’s wedding, we were not in need of any sustenance, so we declined the insidious offer.

The score that night was Gary 50, Jody 3, Peggy 1. As in insect bites. My tally was over 50, but I was scratching so much I never could get a complete audit of the damage. I am sure I could get work as an anti-malarial. Just as the joke in Glacier National Park is that you don’t have to be able to outrun a grizzly bear, you only have to be able to outrun one member of your party, I could guarantee that no one in a group will contract malaria as long as I’m present (sans socks), because every mosquito in a 50 mile radius will focus strictly on me to the benefit of any and all warm blooded mammals nearby.

Wedding photos:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/26545681@N07/sets/72157622958488770/