After our first
night in the state-run hotel of Jammu, where they were surprised, for want of a better word (shocked?) to hear that we were going to spend the night in the same room, we were picked up by
someone and transported to Pawan’s family’s house with some other relatives. As
it later turned out, they were Pawan’s sister’s husband’s brother’s family. We
had to go through a few parallels in our own families to realize how they were
(hardly at all to our standards) related to the actual bride&groom. And so
I realized that in fact I too have a huge family, were we to invite all these
loose acquaintances of our families to our hypothetical wedding. But that was alright,
as we will see later in the story, they came in really handy, at least for us.
The first
day was a relaxed affair. We got to meet the family in an endless parade of “cousins”. It was easy to see the
features of our friends in their direct family, and although it took us all of
the days to remember their names, we could at least in the sea of “cousins”
always find anchorage at a sister, mother or father. We had to eat plates and
plates full of Kashmiri delights, and overboard with all of the Delhi-belly
precautions, to make way for politeness. I don’t know how much stuff we ate
that at least 10 people would have touched…
The second
day we went shopping with Pawan and Swati. We hadn’t seen Swati so far, since
2009, so this was a great reunion, even if it was a bit hectic, because they
were both in high demand by the family and some 6000 things still needed to be
arranged. We had said that we would like to wear traditional Indian costumes,
and so we went looking for those. I tried on a few saris, which turned out to
be even more complicated than I had already anticipated. With Swati’s advice I
chose a sari that was “wow” and definitely not quite your traditional sari.
Thomas went for (peacock) blue kurta pajamas.
After a nice lunch, the bride-to-be was off on other duties, and we went home
again with Pawan. There was some music and dancing and a ceremony with water
and walnuts. This all sounds pretty vague, and that was how we experienced it.
One of Pawan’s teenage cousins was a source of wisdom on all that was going on,
but his words were also to be taken with grains of salt. His most memorable
expression was “India is dirty!”, which is true, but didn’t earn him much
credit from the rest of the family. There was again eating, and we met Pawan’s
school friends from way back. Pawan seemed thankful that they had showed up,
after he had missed all their weddings and children being born and other
highlights. This made me a bit homesick for my own school friends, the weddings
I missed, and the children I hardly know.
The next
morning however Thomas had acquired some infamous microorganisms, and after a
short walk decided to stay in the hotel to get fit for the biggest day. Pawan’s
brother-in-law, a doctor, came around with some medicine, and Pawan took me out
on another small shopping tour and back to the house. Without Thomas, I was
immediately seized by the aunties and spent most of the day huddled under a
blanket with various aunties and cousins of the female gender. I should say
that there was a clear gender separation, although not forced, and that the
aunties generally resided on mattresses spread throughout the house, under
blankets when it got cold. As foreign female I always find you get the privilege
of both being somewhat accepted into the male-crowd (helped by Pawan
introducing me as a fellow-PhD), as well as getting fully immersed into the
female rounds. In Egypt I had a completely different experience visiting the
scientists’ houses and families than the male prof, who never got to see let
alone talk to the wives of scientists.
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| Pawan undergoing a ceremony, which is being filmed, and every auntie knows better how to do it |
One of
Pawan’s close aunts immediately made use of the situation without Thomas. The
day before she had asked me whether I was married, which I tried to explain
while we were standing next to loud drums. So it was no surprise that when
Thomas was at the hotel in bed, she mentioned to me, not so casually, that she
wanted her son to be married to a European girl. I was then without further ado
introduced to the son in question. Pawan immediately started making fun of his
aunt, and I tried again to explain my relationship-situation. I also thought to
myself “auntie, you have no idea what you would be in for with me as
daughter-in-law…”. Although she later commented to me how handsome and friendly
Thomas was, I am not sure she really accepted the situation fully …
This was
also a big day. All the women got their mehndi done (henna).
Pawan got smeared
with kurkuma, washed with yoghurt, and dressed in new clothes. There was more
dancing and incomprehensible things going on. I went on walks with aunties, and
made friends with some of the younger cousins, who had some very interesting
questions (“what is your favourite colour, your favourite vegetable (??!!!),
what moisturizer do you use, where is New Zealand, how do you pray if you have
no religion?”). Although I ran into some undesirable discussions in Brasil when
asked about getting married and having children, and I had fabricated some
half-truths to keep people happy, in the course of the days I always decided to
tell the truth. No, we are not married but yes we live together and this is
socially accepted. Yes I have a PhD too and I work fulltime and I wouldn’t want
it any other way. In my country people go to the town hall to get married, and
hardly any go to church. It is possible to be honest with yourself and truthful
to the world without having ever believed in a God. Suddenly I wanted all these
people, especially the little girls, to get a feeling for my world as it is,
not making things up to smooth the differences between our cultures. I may have
gone a little bit over the top towards the end as the 100th unknown
family member asked how wedding ceremonies are in Western culture … “NO church,
no, we do NOT go to church”. Thomas argued that even in Western society most
weddings are in church, which I guess is true in general, but none of my
married friends except one (or rather two) were married in church. So to me,
church is pretty exotic.
Anyway, I
don’t really want to stray into that area. People can get married any way they
like and it is all fine by me. Nevertheless, if people ask me my opinion, I
give it the way I see or experience things, and I realize my experiences are
rather Godless and feminist, or pro-female, and I am happy that way, but I also
try to respect other ways.
Well, that’s
enough for keeping the blog politically and religiously correct. On to the
wedding.
So the
third day, without Thomas, was pretty straining for me. I also had some
microorganisms in my belly, but because by now soooo much family had arrived
and things were soo hectic, I could control better what not to eat. We learned
how to fake eating lots of food by saying either “we’ve had food already” or “we’ll
get some later”. The food was a-ma-zing, but just not very friendly on the
stomach for us. I had explained Western weddings, New Zealand culture, German
research and my “relationship” to Thomas more times than I cared to recount.
After
another sleepless night (I had nightmares about food and terrorists every
night) we woke early to get into our dresses. Thomas was slightly recovered
from the evil microorganisms. Now the family’s family's family in the hotel came in handy: the lady
had agreed to help me with my sari. A sari is a 10 meter long cloth that has to
be draped, folded, tucked in and attached with safety pins in mystical ways.
The blouse that was last-minute fitted and prepared by a tailor turned out to
be waaaay too small, luckily I could take out some centimeters from the seam,
but it completely ruined the shape of things. But the vague-family-member was a
great help and she also provided me with nailpolish and a bindi on the forehead
in the right colour to match the sari. On previous days I had been asked where
my nailpolish and lipstick was, as in, why didn’t you do anything about your
appearance …
We then
drove to Pawan’s house, again an amount of people was piled into the small car
that now, although we experienced it several times, seems improbable.
There, Pawan had mutated into a well-dressed zombie. He was looking absolutely
the part, very smart and stunning in his wedding costume, but also as if the
real Pawan was not in there. In as far as we hadn’t understood yet that this
wedding was much more the families’ wedding than the couple’s wedding, it now
became clear that in the culmination of things, the bride and groom were mere
puppets. Which they had warned us about, and which they themselves accepted.
We drove
off to somewhere, stopped along the way somewhere and something happened. Then we
drove on, and had breakfast at “the venue”, as it turned out. At the venue, I
unfortunately had to go to the toilet, which turned out to be the filthiest
toilet I have ever seen in my entire life. The huge spider shithole in
Indonesia and the STD-laden toilet in Perth were nothing compared to it. Let me
not go into details, but wearing a sari was a disadvantage: every surface of
the sari must have become covered in cholera and other excremental diseases.
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| In discussion with the drummer, who was slightly taking over the show in the wrong way |
We then
drove to the temple, and all piled in there and waited. Then Swati came in
(beautiful, but also not the “real” Swati) and was ushered next to Pawan. Men
and women were again separated except for Pawan and Swati, lucky me, they were
just in front of me, with several aunties making sure continuously and
perpetuously, that their clothes, veils, daggers, shawls and other attributes
were in order. There was praying and they circled the altar four times,
connected by a pink shawl. Another round of communal sweet stuff was handed out.
And then we went out, drove back to the venue and had snacks and lunch, while
the happy couple was being filmed and photographed for several hours straight.
Intermezzo
about the video-photo crew: these were two guys that were continuously present
and filmed every single second of everything. They were very excited about
foreign guests and I am sure we are by now on their website as proof of their international
capabilities. I got super fed-up with them in about 10 minutes, because the
bright light on their camera was blinding me all the time. At some point I
decided to get a few very obvious photos of them, which clearly made them
uncomfortable.
We also had
to dance and answer many questions by young cousins, which was a lot of fun.
Then we went home again, where another ritual was performed welcoming Swati into
her new home, and then we had snacks and dinner. We were all staring at Pawan
and Swati, whose individualities were slowly seeping back into them. This got a
bit on our nerves and we asked if we could sit with them, which we then did. It
was hard to have an actual conversation, we were all pretty worn out, but it
was nice to just sit there and be together.
Despite all I’ve said about the
wedding so far (I’m afraid it isn’t too positive), it does give you much more
the opportunity to get to know the family, the customs, and appreciate more the
cultural heritage of your friends, than a one-afternoon-town-hall-wedding. In
fact I spent a lot of time thinking about the differences in our cultures, and
although I would abhor a wedding like this, I also realized that even in
weddings our culture doesn’t seem to celebrate Life and the Universe sufficiently.
Compared to India as a whole, Western society as a whole seems so pale, hasty,
superficial and lacking that ethereal “other” layer. But then again, I prefer
superficiality if it means the water and the streets are clean, I can trust
somewhat in democracy and I feel safe.
We drove to
the hotel with Pawan and Swati, who were staying in a hotel nearby. Sleepily we
said goodbye and all of us went to bed (although not without some difficulty in
getting out of the sari…). The next morning we drove on to Dharamsala/McLeod
Ganj for some reflective Buddhism.
