Hindu Wedding-Part One

Daren’s normal schedule is to head right down here to Kovalam, practice yoga with Lino for 6 weeks or so, then as it begins to get really hot and humid here, head up to Mysore, which is higher in elevation and about 600 miles north of Kovalam, so much cooler with little humidity. This year however, one of his good friends, Deepak, was getting married. Deepak even worked out his wedding, knowing that Daren comes every year, so that hopefully Daren and I could make it. Two years ago when I was here, Deepak showed me all over Mysore while Daren did some classes and worked from the hotel room. He took me to one of the main markets, and we walked all over in there, telling me why they have certain things and showing me how they do other things. I really enjoyed the time as I got to see India from a native perspective, as opposed to a simple tourist.
There are four main friends, friends that were together 12 years ago when Daren made his first trip to India, and are still the best of friends now. Ajay now is a yoga teacher and has his own shala (studio). sthalam8.com is the website for Ajay’s Shala. He is doing very well for himself, as his classes are full and he has even begun a teacher training program. Ajay teaches Astanga yoga which has it origins in Mysore. Deepak runs the restaurant that is located at Ajay’s shala. This arrangement has been going on for almost two years now and its working wonderfully. Rakesh is in school. and Umesh is a banker (thats the best way to describe what he does).
Because Deepak was very busy with the wedding, we spent most of our time with Ajay and Rakesh. They are also the ones that took care of us at the wedding. That statement might sound a little odd, but keep reading and you will understand.
I’m sorry to say, I really still don’t understand everything that went on at the wedding, and honestly, I don’t think anyone did except the priest - Hindu priest of course. I can say that with complete confidence since several days before the wedding I asked Deepak about what we should except, and even he didn’t know!!! For the most part, a Hindu wedding will last 2-4 days depending on a number of factors, one of which I was able to figure out; the more days that are in the wedding means the higher the caste you are in. I was actually told this, plus, higher caste people can afford longer weddings, so they naturally last longer. What I don’t understand is what could possibly take longer to do. Can you see this happening in one of our weddings; “Thank you for coming everyone. Today we are going to hear about the bride, tomorrow the groom, day three, exchange vows, and on day four they will kiss.!” Talk about a wedding. Plus, I can see this going over in the US. Parents would spend their entire life savings just to say that their daughter’s wedding lasted 67 days!!!!! Of course they spend their life savings anyway, just to out do the Jones’, but thats another story all together.
The wedding took place outside of Mysore in a village that neither one of us can remember the name. It was is a very small village about a 45 minute drive from Mysore. The people of this village consider Mysore to be a big city. (For my friends in Vegas, Mysore is about the size of boulder, and friends from Utah, make that Beaver!!! So think about how small this village is, if one of these places was considered a city?)
It seemed like the entire village was there for the wedding, and even if everyone from the village was not there, I can assure you that the entire village knew about the wedding.
This was an arranged marriage, the bride was a friend of the families, and all I can really tell you is that her and Deepak had talked many times on the phone together, but had only seen each other twice before the wedding. After talking to Deepak, he told me that he had turned down several other girls, some of which would have put him into family money, but even though he new the marriage was going to be arranged, he wanted to make sure that he had feelings, or thought he could love this person, not just because the family wanted him to get married. I told him that was a very honorable thing to do.
We arrived the evening of the first day of the wedding. The main reason was that we were traveling with Ajay and Rakesh, and Ajay had to teach classes during the first day of the wedding so we left Mysore at about 5:30 that evening. The car ride for me was as usual, very stressful, and I hated it, but it didn’t last long, thank god!
We pull up to the reception center (thats what I’ll call it, and will explain more about it later), and get out of the car. Getting out of that car was the biggest mistake we ever made during this entire trip. I say that with good spirit however. You would have thought, had this been a Christian wedding, that the Pope just showed up. This is a small village, and white man does not come through often, or at least doesn’t stop here! We became the ABSOLUTE focus of attention for at least the next hour! We found out later that by just having us there, two Americans, invited by Deepak, was a very high honor for both families to have.
For the next hour I think I shook ten thousand hands and said my name 150,000 times. Of course at the same time next to me, Daren is doing the same thing. Everyone wanted to know where we were from and what we thought of their village. (Here in India, you must tell people you are from America, because most don’t understand the difference between American and The United States. Many of the people here know of the city Chicago however, because of President Obama). People, I can’t see the village for the villagers! If you ever want to feel like a movie star, just find yourself in a small village in India; and if you have blonde hair and blue eyes... we would never see you again! We had experienced things like this the last time we were here in India, but on a much smaller scale. This time we were invited guests of the groom, and everyone was going to make sure that they got to shake our hands.
Because of culture differences, we spent about 45 minutes only talking to the men that were at the wedding, and then slowly some of the women were bold enough to come up and say Hi. We were escorted to the family members of both the groom and bride, and as per custom, we could and did shake hands with all the men, but with the women, especially the older ones, we could only smile, nod our heads and say hello.
We spent about 2 hours total there that evening. We did get to see Deepak for a few minutes, and we did meet the bride for the first time. She does not speak English except for Hello and a few other small words. She was even hesitant to shake our hands, but Deepak told her in our culture that was considered normal so she did.
I have no idea what went on during the day, the first day of the wedding. I didn’t even think to ask I was so overwhelmed by everything that was going on. There was a hotel located next to the center which most of the family was staying at. Technically they didn’t have a room for us, but many of the family members were willing to condense so that we could have a room. There were as many as 8 people in a room already!!!!
Ajay felt it would be better if they took us somewhere, away from the wedding party, otherwise they didn’t think we would get any sleep. The party goes on all night, and being American, we would not have been left alone. There is a Buddhist Monastery, Bylakuppa, about 20 kilometers way that had places to stay for guests, so off we went to the monastery.
It was just Daren, I and the driver of the car that went to the monastery. Ajay and the gang stayed at the wedding to party. We get to a hotel that is right across the street, and Daren goes in to see if they have a room. We are in luck, they do. Daren gets the room, comes back out to get me and our bag. (We left most of our stuff in Mysore as we were only going to be gone for one night.) There were several shops and a restaurant on the main floor with rooms on the two floors above that. We made it just in time to eat something as they were getting ready to close up shop for the night. Daren took our backpacks up to the room while I ordered for us since they wanted to close the kitchen down. In the states that means clean up for the night, but not really sure what that means here in India?
When you are in places like this in India, you must be very careful about the food you chose to eat. Its not quite like the touristy places that understand the western needs of being clean. Basically you can only order things that have been cooked to death, and even then you must take your chances that the plates and utensils (if they give you some) are clean. We did order some Dal (lentils) and Chapati (basically a tortilla), and bottled water. It tasted good, we ate, and then went to the room.
As we approached the room Daren kept smiling at me and I should have know that something wasn’t good, but, like a dumb ass, I just kept smiling back. I hadn’t seen the room yet. The room was small and very basic, that I understood, and he told me there was no not water. I laughed and said thats why god invented deodorant. I didn’t need to take a shower in the morning, and no offense to anyone, but could guarantee I would be cleaner than many at the wedding.
I can’t say that the room was dirty per say. Its just that it was an old building, and you could tell that no one had stayed in the room for a while. There was a cob web between the pillow and the sheets! As Daren and I looked around the room a little more, we found a few more things that were hard to swallow, but if we slept in our clothes, using our backpacks as our pillows, not turn on the tap water, and keep one light on, we should make it out of here alive in the morning.
At this point, Daren told me he would be right back and left the room. I thought maybe he was going to see if they had a more recently cleaned room. I re-inspected the room again, took a picture and laughed, thinking, well I’m in India. Daren soon came back and had gone and talked to the driver. The driver was able to find out that the monastery itself had a place that visitors could stay, and found out where it was. Daren said we should go and try that place out. At this point in time I was up to sleeping in the car so I didn’t mind. The man was not at the front desk when we left, and I asked Daren if he was going to try and get his money back. He just shrugged his shoulders and said “It was $5, he can have it!”
They did have a room for us at the monastery. It’s layout was exactly the same as the other room, but his one was clean. This is a monastery, and not one that is used to getting western tourists. The mattress, whatever it was made of was soft, but we shared one blanket. There was no hot water, but already went down that road tonight. There was also no soap, towels of any kind, or toilet paper! The walls were bare, but we did have curtains on the window. Thats about all I can say about the place. It was clean, and we could spend the night relaxed, knowing that we would wake up alive in the morning and not be somethings meal for the evening...and so we did.
I’m going to divide up the next several entries. One will be about the monastery, titled such, then I will continue with the wedding.