Spring Wedding I

Posting after a short hiatus - had gone to India for my elder brother's wedding and returned to the US just today. Couldn't think of a better way to kill the jet-lagged night than to collect my thoughts about the trip and the wedding.

If I had to describe the trip in one word, it would be "hectic"!! Me and my brother, who lives in Atlanta, reached India 10 days before the wedding day. We had been told that most of the preparations for the wedding were complete, and we had to just show up and shop for our own clothes. You would think that 10 days would be more than enough to do that, right? Wrong! When in India they say that they're ready, it usually means there would be just enough time for everything to be done if you cut your sleep to 4 hours a night.

Well, it took us 7 days to figure out my brother's wedding dress - an elaborate Achkan (a traditional Indian dress that has its roots in the Mughal period) , a red turban - that is a distinctly Punjabi way to celebrate any big occasion, and a pair of intricately embroidered Punjabi Juttis - actually we bought two of them but that story will come later.

Apart from the dresses, the list of things to be done included distributing the wedding cards, making sure everything was tip-top for the three ceremonies to be held back-to-back in 2 days, while entertaining a White American friend of my brother who decided to grace the big occasion - he deserves another post for the grit and courage he showed while in India :)

The cards - well the guest list itself told a story about how the society runs in India. Apart from the usual milieu of family, friends and relatives, also on the list were people who were supposed to be related to us in a way only Indian society can figure - my uncle's sister's husband's brother's family and children, children of children of cousins of my grand parents. Not surprisingly, we have a unique name for every relation, no matter how many steps removed they are from us. Apart from the apparently related people, we had also invited people from the college which my mom runs as a principal - it included the whole teaching and non-teaching staff, the lab assistants, the clerical staff, and also the whole entourage of mali's, chowkidars, sweepers and other class 4 employees that exist in the colonial like system of government colleges in India. The amazing thing for me was that all these people actually seemed excited about the wedding, and EVERYONE showed up for the wedding and probably danced more than our family! Tells you something about the workplace in India, and about the absence of any boundaries between work and personal life.

I was assigned the cards for the staff, and packed off with one of the staff members to distribute the 100 odd cards. It took us 2 full days to go through the whole list, and I visited areas in Ludhiana that I never knew existed. It was an eye opening experience for me in more ways than one. Firstly, the people. Because I was the principal's son who was visiting, everybody wanted to leave a good impression on me. I would be invited for a cup of coffee, tea or thanda everywhere I went, and when I refused citing the number of cards still to be distributed, people would repeat the offer a couple of times, and then chide me for not taking up on it. But I would observe the look of relief once it was clear that I wouldn't be coming in after all. The amazing thing was that there were only a couple of exceptions to the above pattern in the hundred cards that I distributed. I started to get irritated with the hypocrisy of the whole thing, and I actually wanted to tell some people that well, I know you don't really want me in there, so let's not waste each other's time by going through the whole routine!

Another observation I made while roaming the streets of Ludhiana looking for the addresses was the selfishness with which buildings had been made. Sometimes to reach someone's house, I had to drive over gravel roads, pebbles, pothole laden brick roads and even kutcha paths to reach a mansion like house with gate-keepers, dogs, and with the lawns landscaped!! I haven't been able to paint a good picture of the huge contrast between the roads and those houses on the roads, but you have to see it to believe it. What I wonder is how come those obviously rich people not coax the government into action to build those roads. Every once in a while I would come across a good road that had been apparently built by some houseowner, but it would last probably the length of 2 houses. The thought that people weren't ready to spend some money or use their connections for something that would benefit not only them but everybody, was pretty disturbing. Kind of gives some clues to what's wrong with the country in general - nobody wants to invest in something that helps everybody (even if they are themselves the ones to be benefited) and propel the society forward as a whole.

I have lots more to add to the trip - will have to break this one into two or three posts. Time to hit the sack for now - Buenos Noches!