The fact that I was invited to a wedding within my first three weeks in India is a pretty good example of the tremendous hospitality I have observed here. Sunil, a field-worker here at Navdanya invited a few other interns and myself to his wedding up in the mountains north of Rishikesh this past weekend. Hearing about how amazing Indian weddings are we all jumped at the chance to attend a "Real Indian Wedding". Whether he was just being friendly to invite us we will never know. We heard it was good luck to have foreigners at your wedding, anyways.
I know everyone's first question is, "What did I wear?", but I will get to that in a moment. First, getting to the wedding was an adventure in itself. The information for directions to the wedding were left in the office for us to use. The only problem was that they were all written in Devangari Script... so, not only was the invitation not in English, but not even English letters. Luckily a few of us are beginning to learn the script, so we deciphered some of it, but left the rest up for the taxi driver we would once hire when we got to Rishikesh. In the office we were told the village was about 20km from Rishikesh.
We arrived in Rishikesh on Saturday and took the afternoon to look for something to wear and a gift for the newlyweds. We brought the wedding invitation around town to hire a taxi to the wedding. But the more people we showed, the farther and farther away the wedding seemed. We were eventually brought to a taxi stand and told the village on the invitation was actually 100km away! With our outfits and gift (a handmade marble vase) already purchased we decided to make the long journey. This involved getting up at 5am the next morning to meet our taxi by 6am. Our "taxi" was a Jeep with no shocks whatsoever driving on a pothole-littered, 8-foot wide, twisty mountain road. The scenery was absolutely beautiful, though. My camera does not do justice to what it was like seeing the sunrise over the terraced mountainside of northern India.
We arrived at the village by 9am and were then loaded into another Jeep with other wedding guests onto an even skinnier mountain road for another hour-long journey dodging schoolkids and large cattle. By the end of that ride we had all become good acquaintances with the other guests we met in the Jeep. Once out of the Jeep we suspected we were at the wedding when we saw Sunil adorned with many 10-ruppee bills and a crown with a white-pearl viel standing next to an ornately dressed donkey.
However, we saw no bride and no bride family. Sunil's sister told us that we would then hike 5km down to the village where the ceremony would take place. I am still amazed that the Indian women's skinny plastic sandals stood a better chance than my mountain-hiking Chacos. I fell three times during the steep journey down to the riverside village.
Once at the village we were greeted by the bride's family singing under an archway. We all just stood and watched while a few drummers and a keyboardist (who also hiked down with us) played music in the background. We were then shuffled into a tiny, cement schoolroom where we watched Sunil sit for a little bit and were served chai and some Ritz-style crackers that tasted like hard-boiled eggs. After that we were brought outside of the schoolroom for the first round of many dances. I felt like a giant next to the tiny Indian women asking me how we dance in the United States since I had obviously never danced to Indian music in my life.
After five minutes of dancing we were brought to this rundown hotel style building where we were served breakfast- even though it was noon. "Breakfast" consisted of a fried bread and some dal with a dumpling in it.
Then we were brought back to the schoolroom where Sunil and his bride were seated. They just sat there while their picture was taken over and over again. During the twenty minutes of picture taking none of us saw a smile from either of them. The bride, Kusum, looked like she was about to be locked in a cement room for the rest of her life, and Sunil looked like he would rather be watching football. This was an arranged marriage, like many of them in India are, so Sunil and Kusum had only met once before. They did, however, talk on the phone every week while he was here at Navdanya and she was in this tiny village over the river and through the woods, which is quite uncommon.
After the picture-taking we were brought outside for even more picture taking, although this time it included the family and us! We were brought right up front with the whole family to take a picture with Sunil and Kusum. After this, Louise (another intern at Navdanya) and I were then escorted back to the hotel-type facility, while the three boys we were with were asked if they would like to have some "Indian Wine". Louise and I danced a bunch more with the girls of Sunil's family until it was time for "lunch". When the boys reappeared they explained that the wine turned out just to be watered down rum. Lunch consisted of rice hand-scooped onto our plates by the chef and topped with dal. We all sat on the ground in a big circle and ate with our hands.
Unprepared for a big trek that day none of us had brought much water so we had nowhere to wash our hands and eventually just gave into drinking the tap water in the village. Honestly, if this adventure doesn't result in "Delhi Belly" I feel pretty confidant I could eat almost anything here in India. And remarkably, none of us have felt sick at all, yet!
After lunch the boys were invited to drink more wine and smoke while Louise and I were asked to join the women inside the hotel stretching out on beds and talking about our lives back in France and the United States. Louise is only 20 so she was off the hook, but me, being 26 and not even married left them all quite surprised. When we headed back outside to dance Louise and I realized the actual ceremony of the wedding had been going on that whole time and no one was really watching. A few of the bride's family members were sitting around and taming down the new calf they just received, but otherwise everyone else was dancing and socializing. We then presented our gifts by standing in line and receiving the marriage mark (a red mark on the forehead sprinkled with rice) and gave the same to Sunil and Kusum.
By the time we were ready to march back up the hill the boys were plenty dehydrated and a little loopy. Tradition in Indian culture is that once the bride is married she must then move to her husband's village and never see her family again. The joyfulness on the dance floor drained as we all watched Kusum being pulled out of her house screaming and crying like a little kid. She was shoved into a small red carrier that was then marched up the hill followed by Sunil on his donkey.
The hike up, especially for the boys proved to be physically exhausting. The small villages we passed through along the hike up provided us with candy and water from unknown sources. We reached the top just before the sunset and just before the goat herds started heading back down the hill. We were invited to sit in the same Jeep as Sunil and Kusum and Sunil's sisters on the way back into town. We attempted to dance and sing to music on the sisters' cell phones in order to distract ourselves from feeling carsick and looking out the window at the scary windy road in the dark. And by the time we had reached the village Kusum had fallen asleep on Sunil's shoulder, making their solemness throughout the day all seem like an act. We then finally arrived back in Rishikesh by 10pm and rewarded our successful 16-hour journey with pizza!
I know everyone's first question is, "What did I wear?", but I will get to that in a moment. First, getting to the wedding was an adventure in itself. The information for directions to the wedding were left in the office for us to use. The only problem was that they were all written in Devangari Script... so, not only was the invitation not in English, but not even English letters. Luckily a few of us are beginning to learn the script, so we deciphered some of it, but left the rest up for the taxi driver we would once hire when we got to Rishikesh. In the office we were told the village was about 20km from Rishikesh.
We arrived in Rishikesh on Saturday and took the afternoon to look for something to wear and a gift for the newlyweds. We brought the wedding invitation around town to hire a taxi to the wedding. But the more people we showed, the farther and farther away the wedding seemed. We were eventually brought to a taxi stand and told the village on the invitation was actually 100km away! With our outfits and gift (a handmade marble vase) already purchased we decided to make the long journey. This involved getting up at 5am the next morning to meet our taxi by 6am. Our "taxi" was a Jeep with no shocks whatsoever driving on a pothole-littered, 8-foot wide, twisty mountain road. The scenery was absolutely beautiful, though. My camera does not do justice to what it was like seeing the sunrise over the terraced mountainside of northern India.
We arrived at the village by 9am and were then loaded into another Jeep with other wedding guests onto an even skinnier mountain road for another hour-long journey dodging schoolkids and large cattle. By the end of that ride we had all become good acquaintances with the other guests we met in the Jeep. Once out of the Jeep we suspected we were at the wedding when we saw Sunil adorned with many 10-ruppee bills and a crown with a white-pearl viel standing next to an ornately dressed donkey.
However, we saw no bride and no bride family. Sunil's sister told us that we would then hike 5km down to the village where the ceremony would take place. I am still amazed that the Indian women's skinny plastic sandals stood a better chance than my mountain-hiking Chacos. I fell three times during the steep journey down to the riverside village.
Once at the village we were greeted by the bride's family singing under an archway. We all just stood and watched while a few drummers and a keyboardist (who also hiked down with us) played music in the background. We were then shuffled into a tiny, cement schoolroom where we watched Sunil sit for a little bit and were served chai and some Ritz-style crackers that tasted like hard-boiled eggs. After that we were brought outside of the schoolroom for the first round of many dances. I felt like a giant next to the tiny Indian women asking me how we dance in the United States since I had obviously never danced to Indian music in my life.
After five minutes of dancing we were brought to this rundown hotel style building where we were served breakfast- even though it was noon. "Breakfast" consisted of a fried bread and some dal with a dumpling in it.
Then we were brought back to the schoolroom where Sunil and his bride were seated. They just sat there while their picture was taken over and over again. During the twenty minutes of picture taking none of us saw a smile from either of them. The bride, Kusum, looked like she was about to be locked in a cement room for the rest of her life, and Sunil looked like he would rather be watching football. This was an arranged marriage, like many of them in India are, so Sunil and Kusum had only met once before. They did, however, talk on the phone every week while he was here at Navdanya and she was in this tiny village over the river and through the woods, which is quite uncommon.
After the picture-taking we were brought outside for even more picture taking, although this time it included the family and us! We were brought right up front with the whole family to take a picture with Sunil and Kusum. After this, Louise (another intern at Navdanya) and I were then escorted back to the hotel-type facility, while the three boys we were with were asked if they would like to have some "Indian Wine". Louise and I danced a bunch more with the girls of Sunil's family until it was time for "lunch". When the boys reappeared they explained that the wine turned out just to be watered down rum. Lunch consisted of rice hand-scooped onto our plates by the chef and topped with dal. We all sat on the ground in a big circle and ate with our hands.
Unprepared for a big trek that day none of us had brought much water so we had nowhere to wash our hands and eventually just gave into drinking the tap water in the village. Honestly, if this adventure doesn't result in "Delhi Belly" I feel pretty confidant I could eat almost anything here in India. And remarkably, none of us have felt sick at all, yet!
This was the trash can. We thought about hiking our plates out, but there are no trash cans even in the city. |
After lunch the boys were invited to drink more wine and smoke while Louise and I were asked to join the women inside the hotel stretching out on beds and talking about our lives back in France and the United States. Louise is only 20 so she was off the hook, but me, being 26 and not even married left them all quite surprised. When we headed back outside to dance Louise and I realized the actual ceremony of the wedding had been going on that whole time and no one was really watching. A few of the bride's family members were sitting around and taming down the new calf they just received, but otherwise everyone else was dancing and socializing. We then presented our gifts by standing in line and receiving the marriage mark (a red mark on the forehead sprinkled with rice) and gave the same to Sunil and Kusum.
Louise and I in our fancy new outfits with the drummers who provided the music during the ceremony. |
By the time we were ready to march back up the hill the boys were plenty dehydrated and a little loopy. Tradition in Indian culture is that once the bride is married she must then move to her husband's village and never see her family again. The joyfulness on the dance floor drained as we all watched Kusum being pulled out of her house screaming and crying like a little kid. She was shoved into a small red carrier that was then marched up the hill followed by Sunil on his donkey.
The hike up, especially for the boys proved to be physically exhausting. The small villages we passed through along the hike up provided us with candy and water from unknown sources. We reached the top just before the sunset and just before the goat herds started heading back down the hill. We were invited to sit in the same Jeep as Sunil and Kusum and Sunil's sisters on the way back into town. We attempted to dance and sing to music on the sisters' cell phones in order to distract ourselves from feeling carsick and looking out the window at the scary windy road in the dark. And by the time we had reached the village Kusum had fallen asleep on Sunil's shoulder, making their solemness throughout the day all seem like an act. We then finally arrived back in Rishikesh by 10pm and rewarded our successful 16-hour journey with pizza!
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