hindu wedding | Mo, Frank & Georgian India

I consider myself very fortunate to have been invited to two weddings recently – I know quite a few ex-pats who have been here for one or two years, who say they’ve never been invited to even one – so I accepted both invitations with enthusiasm, and wondered what they would be like.

The first, the wedding of a colleague’s sister, was a grand affair in North Delhi, although the journey north on a Friday night was absolutely hideous! Rush hour here starts at about 6pm and continues until around 11pm, as so many people work late hours in the office to align themselves with the UK. For me, this meant a 3 hour car journey, not helped by the fact that my driver had absolutely no idea where we were going, and kept stopping in dodgy run-down areas to ask directions…he would hop out of the car, leave the engine running, and ask anyone on the side of the road where to find ‘ID Hospital’ (the only landmark I had been given). One such stranger was actually having a pee at the side of the road when Prem (my driver) accosted him! I have copped more than my fair share of roadside pee-ers’ whatsits, thankyou, over the past few weeks – it’s just all too common. Anyway, after bringing me round with smelling salts (because I’m such a prude), my driver eventually deposited me at the venue – a large colourful system of tents opening into a huge outdoor venue! Thankfully I recognised a guy from work who ushered me in past the excited crowd, and explained what would happen:

The bride and groom had the official ceremony earlier that day, and the evening party was a huge celebration for 500 guests to wish the couple well. The groom arrived in an elaborate costume (including a ‘garland’ of money around his neck), on horseback, and then joined in some traditional jostling at the entrance to the first ‘tunnel’. Gifts are exchanged, and the groom is led through the tent to a ribbon barrier, with a line of girls waiting on the other side. Here the groom exchanges some banter with the girls, who demand money to allow him past – they start by demanding some extortionate fee, and they joke their way down to about 1,000 rupees (about £12) before finally allowing him to cut the ribbon and get through. Cue dancers, bongo drums and all sorts as the groom is led into the main arena. Later, the bride is led in by her male family members – she looked stunning!

Once both the bride and groom are in the main venue, they ascend opposite sides of a platform and step onto a revolving pedestal, so that all the guests get a great view. At this point, fresh flower petals were blasted out of tubes on either side, and showered the couple as they were turned around – it was quite a spectacle!

After this the couple then sit on a gold-embossed seat, and have to stay there for ages, with fixed perma-smiles, as various family members join them for the official photographs. I felt extremely sorry for them at this point (although they did very well), and was embarrassed to be ushered up for a photo with them, but duly obliged.

All around the sides of the venue were long stalls serving hot, spicy food, and cold (non-alcoholic!) drinks. It’s the first wedding I’ve been to where I have arrived, and left, completely sober, and still had an enormous amount of fun! Same can’t be said of some of my male work colleagues, who arrived late, completely hammered, and set about throwing shapes on the dance floor in quite an amusing fashion. I have photo evidence and I will use it against them.

Three days later, I donned my sari again for the wedding of my tennis coach’s brother: this was a much smaller do, but equally colourful and enthralling. I was ushered in as some sort of celebrity guest (being the only Westerner at both weddings I was a bit of a novelty), and was directed to sit beside what turned out to be the local MP equivalent! Had a very interesting chat with him about the difficulties of tackling poverty in the neighbourhood, and he introduced me to some really intriguing guys (a lecturer in Hindi, and an astrologer). They tried in vain to teach me some Hindi (I am hopeless at it) while I tried not to splurt curry all over my sari.

Again, I found myself being led about as a star attraction, with the mother of the groom insisting I walk her out in some sort of grand parade when she left to go home! At this point, about 15 children (who’d been watching me for a while) all came rushing up and started touching my knees and feet – this is an Indian custom whereby children are taught to touch the feet of family elders and ‘important’ people as an act of reverence. It was the weirdest thing (again, quite embarrassing) but also quite touching.

Strangers kept coming up to me and asking to be photographed with me and, yet again, I was shooed into the official family photographs – when I protested, Ravi, my tennis coach, said ‘but Mo, you ARE part of the family now’. Bizarre, but sweet! At both weddings, the families were delighted that I had arrived in a sari, even though I have to admit I am still very much an amateur when it comes to putting it on – when one aunt offered to ‘fix’ it for me, I knew I had a lot to learn.

At both weddings, I found I was getting chatted up by really young guys – now this WAS weird. Most Indian men marry by the time they are 26 or 27, so the singletons were most definitely in their mid-twenties. One guy actually said to me, ‘So how old are you?’ (they are very direct over here). I said ‘too old’, to which he replied ‘what, you mean like 30 plus?’ Well, I don’t know if he was just really chancing his arm, or if he had absolutely no idea how old I am, but I revelled in the flattery for a minute before scarpering! When I was in Mumbai a couple of weeks ago, a guy ‘guessed’ my age as 29, but he had had a lot of whisky and was probably just trying his luck. Well, whatever, I’m happy to receive the compliments, no matter how insane or obviously ridiculous they are. Ladies, if you want some flattery, get your butts over here – I can guarantee a lot of attention from younger men.

When I was in Mumbai for a 2-day work event, aside from getting eaten alive by mozzies (I counted 51 bites), I had some really interesting (albeit whisky-fuelled) conversations about arranged marriages vs. ‘love’ marriages (as the locals put it). Arranged marriage is still very much the done thing, but more and more younger folk receive the blessing of their parents to choose. They think it will take several more generations to become the ‘norm’ but times are changing. For couples who don’t receive their parents’ blessings, there are places they can move to and live safely in communities which accept them and their choices, and society seems pretty tolerant.

On a completely different note, I learned recently just how shocking the rift between rich and poor really is: apparently the minimum wage in India is a paltry 28 rupees per day. This is not much more than 30 pence, and wouldn’t buy so much as a loaf of bread. Also, only 2.5% of earning Indians actually pay income tax! There are all sorts of loopholes for people who work in agriculture, etc. to avoid tax, and they take advantage of it. Apparently one of the top Bollywood stars (he earns millions) states ‘farmer’ for tax purposes as he owns some agricultural land, so he contributes zilch to the government. I don’t know how on earth this tax system is supposed to fund education, healthcare, infrastructure, etc., and apparently it just doesn’t. Anyone who can afford it educates their children privately, as the state-run schools are a shambles: apparently even the teachers can’t be bothered to turn up.

So, it’s been a colourful couple of weeks. I seem to have overcompensated for the ‘dry’ weddings with a far too much whisky on other nights out – and why whisky, I have no idea, when a Glenfiddich costs about a tenner a pop. Actually, I have a hazy memory of jakey-drinking some Teachers in the back of a car in Mumbai, en route to a nightclub, but that might have been a bad dream. I hope so, because I was with several people including my boss’s boss at the time, and I think I might cringe if I thought it had actually happened. I was also at a dangerous Sunday lunch last week – an ‘all you can eat, and all you can drink’ affair, for a fixed price, where you just scoff and gulp whatever you want between 12pm and 4pm. That turned into a complete disaster once we’d discovered whisky, mango and fresh chilli cocktails were on the menu. 11 hours later I fell into bed, and did NOT feel too clever on the Monday morning. By Tuesday morning I was rolling around in the apartment with another tummy upset, headache and aching muscles, and had convinced myself by 5pm (after a lot of internet self-diagnosis) that i must have malaria or dengue fever (remember those mosquito bites?). Thankfully this doesn’t seem to be the case, and I should probably instead research the delayed side effects of whisky cocktails and spicy foods – I’m sure I’ll discover the symptoms are pretty similar.

So, I’m heading back to the UK tomorrow to dry out over Christmas, and hopefully will return refreshed and sober to face the cold, hard January in Delhi. I may even need to pack a jumper for my return trip.