Indian weddings are like Fourth of July…only better. Celebrations start a week before the actual wedding, actually weeks before the wedding. Relatives come from all parts of the world, some are close and some are laying eyes on the bride or groom in question first time after they were born. The wedding ends up being a gathering of the family’s five hundred closest relatives and friends.
I attended my cousin sister’s wedding in April, It all starts with the ring ceremony, which happened three days before the wedding; it was the first time we actually saw the groom and his family. A typical scene at the function; the girl’s family on one side, the guy’s family one the other. I don’t know if it is chance or just how things are, but the groom’s family somehow had all guys, whether it’s his friends or brothers and the bride’s family had all girls. Makes for an interesting night though, both sides carefully ignore each other until forced to acknowledge by an external force; an elder. A deejay is the lifejacket that saves the day. Without music, the ceremony could go from mildly awkward to extremely uncomfortable, with people just talking to people they know. At least when the music is on it’s too loud to even hear your own thoughts, so nobody can blame you for being rude.
The entry of the bride is nothing less than a really spectacular firecracker, everybody turns towards her with their eyes big and mouths open in awe. The entire walk from the entrance to the stage is like an art in motion, people watch and comment and of course there is an occasional snort. All eyes are on the bride and groom impatiently waiting them to do something extra ordinary that would make the evening worth getting all dressed up for. If you are a person who gets uncomfortable with a lot of attention then getting married the Indian way is probably not your thing. As if its not enough that everybody is looking at you all the time, but three or four cameras follow your every move. Whether you are eating, talking or picking your nose. Nobody is safe when the camera is on, these guys wait behind pillars or over weight aunties and the moment you do something embarrassing, it is on tape for the world to see.
In this particular wedding function the groom and his family lived in U.S all their life, so they were a little unfamiliar with Indian customs like eating a lot of sweets. Indian sweets are regarded as the final milestone in sealing the deal. People eat and distribute sweets when they get a new car, pass 12th grade or when they get married. After the couple exchange hellos they immediately have to start meeting with every person in the room and eat sweets from their hands. It symbolizes joining of two families so, they cannot say no to sweets. It is safe to assume that after the wedding gets over the bride and the groom swear off sweets for the rest of their lives.
Till now the deejay was playing soft music to set the tone of the party, but once the rings are exchanged, then it gets really wild. The moment the music gets loud everybody runs into corners pretending to be sick or tired after craning their necks trying to see the tiny ring from half a mile away. A few brave souls get onto the dance floor nonetheless, which provides great entertainment for the rest of the guests. Everybody on the dance floor can magically dance like Shakira to ‘hips don’t lie’ or do the ever popular Macarena to everything else. Now it is quite dumb to assume that everybody in the place can fit on one dance floor, but they try and if some reason they can’t find a place on the stage, then dancing is out of the question. These people are left with two choices; either leave to have dinner and try later or stand next to floor pouting and hoping an angel would extend her hand and take them from the non dancing hell to dancing heaven.
In the end with their stomach full and workout done, starts the never ending process of goodbyes. People who have said goodbye starts going towards the door, stop in their tracks because they forgot to say bye to their second cousin’s daughter and are drawn back into the vicious circle of goodbyes. Mind you, this is just the first day, all the people who come for the first function see each other till the end of final wedding day, unless they have another wedding to attend. I personally love weddings so even if my heels were killing me, I kept at my endless goodbyes.
The next function was ‘mehendi’ where the bride and rest of the females in the family put henna on their hands. It was a relatively small ceremony, with just immediate family. So the groom’s side and the bride’s side could get to know each other better. The cameras were still there but that didn’t stop anybody from eating big helping s of food that requires a person to open their mouth wide …very wide. This function is hosted by the bride’s family so every so often somebody would raise false alarms telling everybody that the groom has arrived. After much rushing towards the entrance and checking of make-up, everybody would settle back in their seats and get more food. Finally when the ‘other’ family does arrive, the camera people look like their Christmas has come early and everybody starts moving about acting busy as if they are the MD of the wedding co.
After the initial reintroductions we see, like high school cafeteria, different groups starting to form, elder people take the other elder people and start talking about gas prices. Elder women form a separate group where they discuss their mother in laws and mother in laws discuss their daughter in laws. The bride and groom club, where all the wannabes hang out with the happy couple to get maximum limelight. Then there was the cool friends and cousins group where I along with groom’s friends and brothers and my cousins discussed about very cool things like how to drink without our parents knowing and that people in India, on an average are very short.
After a few hours’ people started getting restless, after a certain point an empty dance floor at a wedding function is simply unacceptable. Dragging people to that dance floor is half the fun and is enjoyed mostly by the elder population. Camera men at this point, are like a pack of hungry dogs, the moment they smell a new activity going on, they pick up their tripods and run like the wind towards it. Once the dancing starts, it is quite impossible to get it to stop. The dance floor would also get divided into two groups one was the young generation that wanted hip-hop and the other was the older generation who wanted Hindi music. The other group would slowly back down from the floor if their choice wasn’t playing.
There is a very old tradition in Indian weddings, the inevitable train dance. Whenever the train dance comes on everybody forms a long human train and run around the room. I usually don’t participate in it because in my head it went something like people grabbing onto anybody or anything they could find, clothes, hands, pants or hair and then dragging the person behind them, around the room screaming and shouting all the while having a good time. In reality it wasn’t that bad I managed to have a good time and nobody pulled my hair.
After much persuasion the dancing finally stopped, goodbyes were exchanged with a promise to meet at the wedding, which happened to be the next day. Next day started with more ceremonies and more sweets. The bride took the regular 5 hours to get ready and another 3 hours making sure that she looks fine. The wedding ground looks like a ballroom; every person there would talk to another person for five minutes then change partners, another five minutes, so on and so forth. It is traditional that the groom comes on a horse, like a knight to rescue the princess from all the mosquitoes. For those who get tired after midnight it is probably a good idea to catch the last car going home.
A typical wedding extends into the wee hours of night. Everywhere I looked I saw cups of coffee, tea, insects, people falling asleep, more insects it was like a train station in a deserted village except for of course the happy couple, in their final stages of getting married so they can go home and sleep and also live happily ever after. After the couple was official everybody breathe a sigh of relief, in case something went wrong, all those sweets would go to waste. We said our final goodbyes, final because the wedding was over and a lot of us were not going to meet again for a long time. It was a lovely wedding, colorful, long, perfectly traditional and I made new friends, it was the biggest firecracker of all, too bad it just went on for three days. But I am not too worried, I have a lot of cousins and sooner or later I’ll get to do the train dance again.
