We arrived in Ludhiana at about 9 am, within about half an hour we were
caught up in a pre-wedding ceremony. Time to shop. We picked up suits
(Helen’s were spectacular). The house started filling up with friends
and relatives of course, so there were plenty of people to start
practicing for the coming festivities – which was an excuse to get some
Bhangra
music going.
Amritsar - 18th
Jan
We all woke up early and left at 8 (which should have been 7) in two
large cars for Amritsar. On the way we stopped at Jalhander for
breakfast at Raman’s [Ramesh’s wife] parents house – a lovely large
meal and a lovely large house.
The road
to Amritsar was
quite foggy, and the drivers’ driving was quite crazy. One of the cars
was too big to make it down the Amritsar streets, but we eventually all
congregated at the Golden Temple and were met by Mahmohan and Manjeet
(Sikh teacher friends of Anjali’s) who gave us a good informed tour of
the Golden
Temple.
We also saw Jallianwalla
Bhag, a
garden where protesters were shot by the British army. Later in the
holiday we’d see the film Rang de Basanti which featured both these
landmarks (sadly both famous scenes of violence) prominently.
We drove the 1/2 hour to the India-Pakistan border, arriving on time
(not like Helen’s Mount Rushmore experience!) to see the closing of the
border
ceremony with a large entusiatic crowd.
On the way
we stopped at ‘Haveli’ (a sort of “Punjabi-world”)
which was
entertaining with gloriously clean toilets. We had an authentic thali –
which no one really needed, but was delicious (if a little force-fed by
the waiters).
Pre - wedding -
19th Jan to 21st Jan
Worth summarising the main parts of the
wedding:
Shagun – Our first opportunity to meet Monika’s family. They came over
in the morning: A big tent had been put up in the street to receive
them. There was an official ceremony with a pandit and gifts
were given
to the groom and family. Selected family members then went
over to
Monika’s house where gifts were given to the bride: She also had
make-up
applied by friends and family. We played a mammoth cricket
quiz
game with Yogi and finally in the evening there was food and dancing in
the tent – which had to finish at 10pm due to a new law (there were
school exams the next day)
Wedding preparations –
For us men
relatively little though Vishal had a Sherwani made and we all had
haircuts (from excellent Indian barber). For the ladies there were
suits to send to the tailors, jewelry to buy (a local woman sold gold
from her house) and the beauty parlour, which offered the mysterious
‘Threading’ service. Apart from that it was time to relax, including
some kite-flying time, which is popular in India.
Ladies
Sangeet – All the ladies get together to sing songs, which are mainly
quite cheeky poking fun at in-laws and marriage in general. Helen
joined in on this as best she could...
Other – There
was a ceremony where amit was smeared in Haldi (turmeric),
traditionally to give his skin a healthy glow. Pretty messy though.
We’re not sure of the name of this ceremony. Also on the wedding day
the ladies have Mehndi
patterns painted on their habds. They have to
let this dry for several hours so they avoid any work for that time. So
many women needed this doing that we had to source extra
Mehndi-appliers who worked at top speed to service the
queues.
The wedding -
21st
Jan
After various
preparations everyone got dressed and left the house in the early
evening.
We all walked together down the street to the local mandir (temple),
Amit
on horseback proceeded by a brass band, with about six guys
lighting the way with electric bulbs powered by a generator (the guy
towing the generator was last in the procession)
After a
brief stop at the mandir, people made their own way to the ‘wedding
palace’ just outside town. This was a huge hall (which was good as we
think there were around 1000 guests in all). Indian weddings like this
one are comparatively very expensive, and we certainly made a grand
entrance with fireworks, plenty of impromptu dancing and
two
bands (the grooms band and the bagpipe playing Punjab
Police Band). The
whole thing was captured by the cameraman from his mini-crane above
us.
In the hall there was very loud music and plenty of food. Rish met
several people who’d last seen him in 1984 and Helen showed off her
dance moves.
The actual wedding
ceremony happened at about
2am, by which time most people had left. It was held outside and we all
gathered around coal braziers for warmth. Two pandits officiated, and
for about an hour various rituals were performed, putting offerings
into the fire etc. The bride and groom made vows to each other and that
was it. We were back at the house by 5am. But were still asleep before
the bride and groom came back: Monica had been saying goodbye to her
family.
