My sister Leenata and I recently came back from spending two weeks in India. We had cousins on both sides of our family getting married on consecutive weekends. For Indian weddings, EVERYONE shows up – so this gave us the perfect opportunity to see almost all of our scattered family in a very short period of time. We couldn’t pass it up. For my sister, this was also the first time she had been away from her kids for more than a day or two since the oldest was born 6 years ago. Anyone who has met my nieces and nephew know how difficult it is to leave them for a few hours, let alone for two weeks. This was a real commitment, and I, for one, was impressed. Our family in India was even more impressed that my brother-in-law Chris would be taking care of the three kids single-handedly for the majority of the time. For my conservative family back in India, this is not the norm at all.
When I told friends and co-workers that I was heading to India for a few weeks for weddings, the response frequently involved some level of questioning regarding marriage prospects. I suppose that’s a fair question – everyone seems to have a story about a friend or acquaintance from India who went on a seemingly normal vacation to India only to return engaged or married. I was definitely dreading this particular aspect of my trip since I was attending the weddings of younger cousins on both sides of my family, providing ample opportunity for anyone and everyone to ask the golden question – “when are you getting married?”. My sister and I even engaged in a friendly bet of sorts on the number of times I would be asked. Though we never ended up with a final number, we would have both well overshot the actual. I was asked the golden question only about 40 times, which is especially surprising since I was attending two weddings. But hey, I’m fine with that!
I think the hardest part was trying to explain why I wasn’t married – and there’s just no easy answer for that. There’s really very little difference between trying to explain a love marriage to someone over there and trying to explain an arranged marriage to someone over here – in each case, it’s the context that matters and it’s extremely hard for many people to understand an environment that’s so completely different from the one they grew up in. I really don’t think that one way is better or worse than the other – both have their pros and cons, but it’s just different. I did finally settle on a response to the golden question, though. I started telling people that I was getting married in three years. The response was generally something along the lines of “oh… okay”. I think I perplexed them a bit and they were wondering if a) I was serious, b) if I understood their question (my command of the language is not the greatest), and/or c) if I responded using the correct words. Instead of asking clarifying questions, these poor unsuspecting relatives were left walking away while thinking “What just happened here?”
In any case, there you have it – I have three years to find a wife. Most of the happy couples I know were introduced to their significant others through friends/family and did not meet at a bar or a club or anything like that. So the way I see it, my current predicament is entirely your fault. I hope you're proud of yourselves. But anyway, to the trip…
Wednesday, February 27th - Friday, February 29th
The next two days are about to become potentially the most boring days of my life. In the past when we’ve flown to India, we’ve almost exclusively flown on Air India. I’m not positive why this is, but all I do know is that the decision was never mine to make. So it could be that Air India offered the cheapest flights or it could be that their food was Indian enough to suit my mom’s taste. But what you could always count on is the complete lack of basic human decency that economy class passengers could expect from the flight attendants. For this reason, I always felt a slight amount of pride when my mom ordered us to swipe the Air India-branded stainless steel utensils from our dinner plates – after all, that’s what they get for being so rude. To be fair, what my mom was really after was the small spoons that they gave you for dessert – these were the perfect size spoons for her spice jars and she hadn’t been able to find that size in any store anywhere. But above all, I recall that as a kid that those flights were the most excruciatingly long and uncomfortable hours imaginable. Needless to say, I was less than enthused about the upcoming days.
From the outset, there was a glimmer of hope with this flight. We had booked our tickets on Jet Airways, which had recently began serving the Newark airport and connects via Brussels. I had heard nothing but excellent things about Jet Airways, and I my fears had already been assuaged by my (cousin) brother-in-law’s father who works for the company. From the moment that my sister and I stepped onto the plane, we were in awe. Part of this awe came from our walk through first and business classes. Well actually, I suppose that this was more jealousy than anything else. But we were pretty pleasantly surprised when we arrived at our seats. This was a very new plane, and as with many newer planes, each seat has it’s own LCD TV – except this one was HUGE (must’ve been at least 10 inches) and had a selection of around 100 movies, a few episodes of different TV shows, and a small selection of games. The seat spacing was excellent too – in both dimensions. Leenata was even able to sit Indian-style for most of the flight without much discomfort.
The food was very tasty, and the menu had a choice of foods and a choice of drink. My favorite part: there was a section that said “Wine List” – underneath this heading was “Australian White Wine” and “Australian Red Wine”. For some reason, that cracked me up – no mention of which winery, which year, which type of wine or anything. But at least they gave us each a bonafide wine glass to drink it with – yes, even in Economy class.
After a few hours in Brussels for a layover, where we strangely had to pass back through security to get on a different plane that was only a few doors down, we made it to Mumbai without much incident. We landed at about midnight and had 3 hours to make our connection flight on Jet Airways to Hyderabad. In total, from the time we left my sister’s house in Northern Kentucky, we spent almost 50 hours in transit before reaching Hospet, our first real destination in India.
Here’s the breakdown for those who don’t believe: 2 hr pre-flight, 2 hr flight to Newark, 5 hr layover, 6 hr flight to Brussels, 4 hr layover, 8 hr flight to Mumbai, 4 hr layover, 2 hr flight to Hyderabad, 1 hr post-flight, 4 hr drive to Gulbarga (where we paused for ~3 hrs), and then the 8 hr drive to Hospet, where the first wedding ceremony was being held. From a vehicle standpoint, we traveled by minivan, tram, plane, tram, plane, plane, bus, bus, plane, and SUV. Whew – I’m exhausted just writing that.
Perhaps the strangest thing that caught my eye during these 2 days of travel was in the US at the Newark Airport. For whatever reason, some genius had decided that people in airports were wasting way too many natural resources and that we direly need infrared assistance for all of our bathroom endeavors. The toilet was automatic, the faucet was automatic, the soap dispenser was automatic, and the paper towel dispenser was automatic. I can never seem to position my hands “just right” underneath the faucet to trigger the sensor. So I spend time moving my hands from side to side, up and down, forward and back, hoping to trigger the right combination of positionings to get some water. After struggling a bit, I noticed a small sign above the faucet that read “Note: Black clothing may not operate faucet”. This puzzles me – what do they want you to do if you are wearing a black shirt? I had noticed that the airport bathroom task force hadn’t provided a normal faucet for those black-clothing-wearing folks. Perhaps they expect you to take your shirt off prior to washing your hands. I suppose this may work for 75+% of Americans, but what do you do if your skin is of a darker hue? Removing a shirt is hardly going to help. And how exactly does my shirt color have anything to do with turning on the faucet anyway – I thought the infrared was looking for my hands? Clearly, you can see that I was stymied and intrigued. So much so that I told my sister to go check the women’s bathroom. Indeed, the same sign was there.
Saturday, March 1st
This weekend in Hospet, my mother’s younger sister’s daughter was getting married. This morning was the beginning of the real festivities – the Haldi ceremony. I haven’t really seen too many Haldi ceremonies before, so this is still a bit new to me. But basically, the bride and her family are smothered in haldi. Haldi is a yellow powder that is frequently used in both cooking and religious ceremonies in India. In this particular application, enormous amounts of the powder are procured and water is added to make a nice paste, which is then generously applied vigorously to the face and arms and feet and hair (and by association, the clothes) of each individual. Though there are religious aspects to this function, the event is a lot of fun since everyone takes an active part in trying to one-up each other in making a mess. At some point, everyone decides that it’s time to wash the haldi off. I don’t think there’s a standard way to do this – it seems to differ a bit from family to family or region to region. For this cousin’s wedding, they sat the bride and her parents and an unmarried family member down side by side in a row and poured water over their heads to wash it off. But not just normal water – they had five large buckets of five different colours of water that they had to do this with. It’s kind of like the Gatorade baths that head football coaches enjoy after a win, except that it’s done with five different flavours, and lemon-lime Gatorade tastes better but is stickier than this water. And I doubt that it’s fortified with electrolytes, whatever the hell those are supposed to do. I think the Gatorade people made that up. Gatorade is thirst-aid, for that deep down body thirst! After the Haldi ceremony, we moved over to the wedding hall. This wedding hall was an old theatre or playhouse of some sort. There was audience seating, and there was a stage where the wedding ceremony would take place. The groom would be coming later this evening, so during the day, our side of the family was busied doing assorted prayers and pujas of some sort. To Indians, this makes perfect sense. To non-Indians, I am sure that this sounds quite curious. I say “assorted pujas of some sort” simply because I have no idea what’s going on, and in fact, most people probably don’t have much of an idea specifically of what’s going on. Indian weddings are highly ritual-based, and pujas and prayers are given by the priest in Sanskrit, a language that is no longer in common use. In Western-society, it’s akin to the prayers given in Latin when a new pope is installed (at least I think it’s in Latin). No one really speaks Latin anymore, not even Latinos. Which brings up a very good point – where the heck did the term “Latino” come from? I know of nary a Mexican who is fluent in Latin (and no, Pig Latin does not count). Sometime during the day, we all sat down in the adjoining cafeteria-type area, and were served lunch. Our plates were banana leaves, stitched together for good measure, and we were served from shiny stainless steel buckets. It’s just much more efficient this way – the banana leaves are completely bio-degradable (as is the food placed on it) and the buckets are easy to serve from. And there’s something cool about being served from a bucket. It’s very strange for me to write about India – every detail that I’m recounting is very second-nature for me since this is something like my 10th or 12th trip to India. So the things that may seem different for a first-timer are not so different to me and therefore I don’t even think twice about it. For example, the power kept going out in the wedding hall – each time this happened, one of the employees would make a mad dash to a side room and fire up the generator. Also, there was no air-conditioning here – but there were massive fans that lined the audience area. Whenever the generator had to be fired up, the fans were turned off because they drew too much juice. In the streets, there are cows and water buffaloes wandering around doing their own thing. Traffic is nuts, so those who own cars rarely drive their own cars – instead, they have personal drivers. The traffic rules are simple:
That evening, the groom and his family are driving in from their town and get delayed by traffic by a few hours. When they arrive, the wedding party is on the stage for the engagement ceremony. Yes – they are getting engaged. The wedding is tomorrow, but the engagement is today. I don’t completely understand this, but that’s what it is.
For those of you who have not witnessed an Indian wedding, the ceremony can seem a bit chaotic and haphazard. There are a ton of people who stand up right next to the actual ceremony to watch or take pictures, completely blocking the view of those seated in the audience. Those seated in the audience expect this, so they weren’t really planning on watching the ceremony anyway – if they wanted to watch, they’d get up and do the same. Instead, those in the audience are chatting away with other audience members. To the Western eye, this can seem very rude. But for Indians, a wedding is more of a family wedding and less of an individual wedding – so socializing is part of what you are supposed to do. Weddings are a gathering for extended family to reloop with one another. As a result, everyone goes to a ton of weddings, so they have little need to witness the actual rites since they’ve seen the procedure many times before. But they go to catch up with family and meet those who are now new to their family, since they can now expect to undoubtedly see a few of these new extended family members at the next wedding.
Sunday, March 2nd
This morning is the actual wedding ceremony. The actual ceremony is performed under what is called a mandap, which is a small 8’ x 8’ stage of sorts with pillars on each corner supporting a roof to cover. This mandap was really cool – it was handmade from a freshly cut banana tree. The artisanship in building and decorating the mandap was absolutely amazing – and at the end, they just tore it down and threw it all away to biodegrade naturally. It was definitely a “green” wedding.
In the middle of the day, my father and I began to get a little bit bored, so we left to go to some nearby ancient ruins – an area called Hampi. What was clear in the hour we were in Hampi was that we could not see anything in one hour. Hampi is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and has ruins dating back to 1 BC. The area was chosen to be one of the capital cities of the Vijayanagara empire from the 1300s to the 1500s because it was well protected by hills on three sides and by a river on the fourth side. Unfortunately, it wasn’t protected enough, since the Muslims destroyed the city later on – I think they must have parachuted in to sneak past the natural defenses. Or maybe they used a Trojan Elephant.
Anyway, the ruins were immense and were really a 1-2 day event to do it justice. But the nicest thing about going to Hampi was that we drove around in our air-conditioned SUV instead of sweating it out in the heat like all the other poor travelers. They should invent an air-conditioned jump suit that you can walk around in – kinda like a spacesuit, except equipped with a microphone/speaker system to allow you to communicate with those poor chaps who are walking around sans A/C spacesuit. Since an A/C spacesuit would probably be a wee bit on the heavy side, the manufacturers might want to think about making it from space-age lightweight materials. Perhaps some titanium alloys of some sort. Maybe some memory foam. Or at least use some materials invented by NASA. Fortunately, it’s a spacesuit, which lends itself very quickly to use NASA-invented materials.
After returning to Hospet, we had lunch and got through the remainder of the wedding. And after a few more hours, we packed 10 of us into an SUV for the 8 hour drive back to Gulbarga.
Monday, March 3rd to Tuesday, March 4th
Last night, we arrived pretty late at my mom’s family’s house. The families of my mother’s three younger brothers live here in the same house that my mom grew up in. Yes, you read that right – all three families. This isn’t completely unheard of in India, though it is rarer and rarer. For us visitors though, it makes it much nice – we only have to visit one house instead of three!
We didn’t do a lot during our brief stay here. Really we were just here to spend time with family that we hadn’t seen in years and years and years. My mother’s family owns a small factory that makes nails and pots and pans and buckets and other metal goods, which they sell from a hardware shop in town. When we were younger, my parents would bring us to India every other summer, and we’d spend weeks on end here. At that time, the factory hadn’t been built, so there were workers in the backyard of the house who were making pots and pans by hand by pounding on flat sheet metal with hammers. We’d spend the day watching them, flying kites, playing cards, running down the street spinning a bicycle tire with a stick (which was surprisingly enjoyable), or playing shop in the shop. There were no televisions, no video games, no movies, and no internet.
On Tuesday afternoon, my sister, father, and I loaded our luggage back into the SUV and drove back to Hyderabad where we had initially picked up the SUV and our driver Rais. Along the way, we watched an old Bollywood movie called “Raja Hindustani” in the SUV. But before we discuss this particular movie, I think it might be prudent to explain the basic rules for making a good Bollywood movie to those of you who have not been exposed to this very unique artform.
To the casual observer, it may appear as though I am mocking the Bollywood movie. But this is not true – I mocketh not-eth. After all, Bollywood movies are more popular to more of the earth’s population than Hollywood movies are. And frankly, once you see a few of the movies, they start to grow on you. Though they are filled with an unnecessary amount of drama, in a sense similar to soap operas, they are also feel-good movies. While there are many Hollywood movies that are also feel-good, there are an awful many movies that are crime thrillers or slasher/horror movies or something else that makes you leave the theatre with the heebie-jeebies rather than a happy smile. And I guess I’ve never really completely understood why you would want to pay good money for that.
After watching the 3 hour movie in the car, we arrived at the bus station in Hyderabad. We had booked tickets on an overnight bus that would take us to my father's hometown. This was no luxury bus either, but we'll save that for next time.
So that concludes the first half of the trip on my mom’s side of the family. I’ll do my best to get the second half written up more timely... especially since I'm a week away from my next vacation!
When I told friends and co-workers that I was heading to India for a few weeks for weddings, the response frequently involved some level of questioning regarding marriage prospects. I suppose that’s a fair question – everyone seems to have a story about a friend or acquaintance from India who went on a seemingly normal vacation to India only to return engaged or married. I was definitely dreading this particular aspect of my trip since I was attending the weddings of younger cousins on both sides of my family, providing ample opportunity for anyone and everyone to ask the golden question – “when are you getting married?”. My sister and I even engaged in a friendly bet of sorts on the number of times I would be asked. Though we never ended up with a final number, we would have both well overshot the actual. I was asked the golden question only about 40 times, which is especially surprising since I was attending two weddings. But hey, I’m fine with that!
I think the hardest part was trying to explain why I wasn’t married – and there’s just no easy answer for that. There’s really very little difference between trying to explain a love marriage to someone over there and trying to explain an arranged marriage to someone over here – in each case, it’s the context that matters and it’s extremely hard for many people to understand an environment that’s so completely different from the one they grew up in. I really don’t think that one way is better or worse than the other – both have their pros and cons, but it’s just different. I did finally settle on a response to the golden question, though. I started telling people that I was getting married in three years. The response was generally something along the lines of “oh… okay”. I think I perplexed them a bit and they were wondering if a) I was serious, b) if I understood their question (my command of the language is not the greatest), and/or c) if I responded using the correct words. Instead of asking clarifying questions, these poor unsuspecting relatives were left walking away while thinking “What just happened here?”
In any case, there you have it – I have three years to find a wife. Most of the happy couples I know were introduced to their significant others through friends/family and did not meet at a bar or a club or anything like that. So the way I see it, my current predicament is entirely your fault. I hope you're proud of yourselves. But anyway, to the trip…
Wednesday, February 27th - Friday, February 29th
The next two days are about to become potentially the most boring days of my life. In the past when we’ve flown to India, we’ve almost exclusively flown on Air India. I’m not positive why this is, but all I do know is that the decision was never mine to make. So it could be that Air India offered the cheapest flights or it could be that their food was Indian enough to suit my mom’s taste. But what you could always count on is the complete lack of basic human decency that economy class passengers could expect from the flight attendants. For this reason, I always felt a slight amount of pride when my mom ordered us to swipe the Air India-branded stainless steel utensils from our dinner plates – after all, that’s what they get for being so rude. To be fair, what my mom was really after was the small spoons that they gave you for dessert – these were the perfect size spoons for her spice jars and she hadn’t been able to find that size in any store anywhere. But above all, I recall that as a kid that those flights were the most excruciatingly long and uncomfortable hours imaginable. Needless to say, I was less than enthused about the upcoming days.
From the outset, there was a glimmer of hope with this flight. We had booked our tickets on Jet Airways, which had recently began serving the Newark airport and connects via Brussels. I had heard nothing but excellent things about Jet Airways, and I my fears had already been assuaged by my (cousin) brother-in-law’s father who works for the company. From the moment that my sister and I stepped onto the plane, we were in awe. Part of this awe came from our walk through first and business classes. Well actually, I suppose that this was more jealousy than anything else. But we were pretty pleasantly surprised when we arrived at our seats. This was a very new plane, and as with many newer planes, each seat has it’s own LCD TV – except this one was HUGE (must’ve been at least 10 inches) and had a selection of around 100 movies, a few episodes of different TV shows, and a small selection of games. The seat spacing was excellent too – in both dimensions. Leenata was even able to sit Indian-style for most of the flight without much discomfort.
The food was very tasty, and the menu had a choice of foods and a choice of drink. My favorite part: there was a section that said “Wine List” – underneath this heading was “Australian White Wine” and “Australian Red Wine”. For some reason, that cracked me up – no mention of which winery, which year, which type of wine or anything. But at least they gave us each a bonafide wine glass to drink it with – yes, even in Economy class.
After a few hours in Brussels for a layover, where we strangely had to pass back through security to get on a different plane that was only a few doors down, we made it to Mumbai without much incident. We landed at about midnight and had 3 hours to make our connection flight on Jet Airways to Hyderabad. In total, from the time we left my sister’s house in Northern Kentucky, we spent almost 50 hours in transit before reaching Hospet, our first real destination in India.
Here’s the breakdown for those who don’t believe: 2 hr pre-flight, 2 hr flight to Newark, 5 hr layover, 6 hr flight to Brussels, 4 hr layover, 8 hr flight to Mumbai, 4 hr layover, 2 hr flight to Hyderabad, 1 hr post-flight, 4 hr drive to Gulbarga (where we paused for ~3 hrs), and then the 8 hr drive to Hospet, where the first wedding ceremony was being held. From a vehicle standpoint, we traveled by minivan, tram, plane, tram, plane, plane, bus, bus, plane, and SUV. Whew – I’m exhausted just writing that.
Perhaps the strangest thing that caught my eye during these 2 days of travel was in the US at the Newark Airport. For whatever reason, some genius had decided that people in airports were wasting way too many natural resources and that we direly need infrared assistance for all of our bathroom endeavors. The toilet was automatic, the faucet was automatic, the soap dispenser was automatic, and the paper towel dispenser was automatic. I can never seem to position my hands “just right” underneath the faucet to trigger the sensor. So I spend time moving my hands from side to side, up and down, forward and back, hoping to trigger the right combination of positionings to get some water. After struggling a bit, I noticed a small sign above the faucet that read “Note: Black clothing may not operate faucet”. This puzzles me – what do they want you to do if you are wearing a black shirt? I had noticed that the airport bathroom task force hadn’t provided a normal faucet for those black-clothing-wearing folks. Perhaps they expect you to take your shirt off prior to washing your hands. I suppose this may work for 75+% of Americans, but what do you do if your skin is of a darker hue? Removing a shirt is hardly going to help. And how exactly does my shirt color have anything to do with turning on the faucet anyway – I thought the infrared was looking for my hands? Clearly, you can see that I was stymied and intrigued. So much so that I told my sister to go check the women’s bathroom. Indeed, the same sign was there.
Saturday, March 1st
This weekend in Hospet, my mother’s younger sister’s daughter was getting married. This morning was the beginning of the real festivities – the Haldi ceremony. I haven’t really seen too many Haldi ceremonies before, so this is still a bit new to me. But basically, the bride and her family are smothered in haldi. Haldi is a yellow powder that is frequently used in both cooking and religious ceremonies in India. In this particular application, enormous amounts of the powder are procured and water is added to make a nice paste, which is then generously applied vigorously to the face and arms and feet and hair (and by association, the clothes) of each individual. Though there are religious aspects to this function, the event is a lot of fun since everyone takes an active part in trying to one-up each other in making a mess. At some point, everyone decides that it’s time to wash the haldi off. I don’t think there’s a standard way to do this – it seems to differ a bit from family to family or region to region. For this cousin’s wedding, they sat the bride and her parents and an unmarried family member down side by side in a row and poured water over their heads to wash it off. But not just normal water – they had five large buckets of five different colours of water that they had to do this with. It’s kind of like the Gatorade baths that head football coaches enjoy after a win, except that it’s done with five different flavours, and lemon-lime Gatorade tastes better but is stickier than this water. And I doubt that it’s fortified with electrolytes, whatever the hell those are supposed to do. I think the Gatorade people made that up. Gatorade is thirst-aid, for that deep down body thirst! After the Haldi ceremony, we moved over to the wedding hall. This wedding hall was an old theatre or playhouse of some sort. There was audience seating, and there was a stage where the wedding ceremony would take place. The groom would be coming later this evening, so during the day, our side of the family was busied doing assorted prayers and pujas of some sort. To Indians, this makes perfect sense. To non-Indians, I am sure that this sounds quite curious. I say “assorted pujas of some sort” simply because I have no idea what’s going on, and in fact, most people probably don’t have much of an idea specifically of what’s going on. Indian weddings are highly ritual-based, and pujas and prayers are given by the priest in Sanskrit, a language that is no longer in common use. In Western-society, it’s akin to the prayers given in Latin when a new pope is installed (at least I think it’s in Latin). No one really speaks Latin anymore, not even Latinos. Which brings up a very good point – where the heck did the term “Latino” come from? I know of nary a Mexican who is fluent in Latin (and no, Pig Latin does not count). Sometime during the day, we all sat down in the adjoining cafeteria-type area, and were served lunch. Our plates were banana leaves, stitched together for good measure, and we were served from shiny stainless steel buckets. It’s just much more efficient this way – the banana leaves are completely bio-degradable (as is the food placed on it) and the buckets are easy to serve from. And there’s something cool about being served from a bucket. It’s very strange for me to write about India – every detail that I’m recounting is very second-nature for me since this is something like my 10th or 12th trip to India. So the things that may seem different for a first-timer are not so different to me and therefore I don’t even think twice about it. For example, the power kept going out in the wedding hall – each time this happened, one of the employees would make a mad dash to a side room and fire up the generator. Also, there was no air-conditioning here – but there were massive fans that lined the audience area. Whenever the generator had to be fired up, the fans were turned off because they drew too much juice. In the streets, there are cows and water buffaloes wandering around doing their own thing. Traffic is nuts, so those who own cars rarely drive their own cars – instead, they have personal drivers. The traffic rules are simple:
- There are no traffic rules.
- There are no traffic rules.
- Size matters.
That evening, the groom and his family are driving in from their town and get delayed by traffic by a few hours. When they arrive, the wedding party is on the stage for the engagement ceremony. Yes – they are getting engaged. The wedding is tomorrow, but the engagement is today. I don’t completely understand this, but that’s what it is.
For those of you who have not witnessed an Indian wedding, the ceremony can seem a bit chaotic and haphazard. There are a ton of people who stand up right next to the actual ceremony to watch or take pictures, completely blocking the view of those seated in the audience. Those seated in the audience expect this, so they weren’t really planning on watching the ceremony anyway – if they wanted to watch, they’d get up and do the same. Instead, those in the audience are chatting away with other audience members. To the Western eye, this can seem very rude. But for Indians, a wedding is more of a family wedding and less of an individual wedding – so socializing is part of what you are supposed to do. Weddings are a gathering for extended family to reloop with one another. As a result, everyone goes to a ton of weddings, so they have little need to witness the actual rites since they’ve seen the procedure many times before. But they go to catch up with family and meet those who are now new to their family, since they can now expect to undoubtedly see a few of these new extended family members at the next wedding.
Sunday, March 2nd
This morning is the actual wedding ceremony. The actual ceremony is performed under what is called a mandap, which is a small 8’ x 8’ stage of sorts with pillars on each corner supporting a roof to cover. This mandap was really cool – it was handmade from a freshly cut banana tree. The artisanship in building and decorating the mandap was absolutely amazing – and at the end, they just tore it down and threw it all away to biodegrade naturally. It was definitely a “green” wedding.
In the middle of the day, my father and I began to get a little bit bored, so we left to go to some nearby ancient ruins – an area called Hampi. What was clear in the hour we were in Hampi was that we could not see anything in one hour. Hampi is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and has ruins dating back to 1 BC. The area was chosen to be one of the capital cities of the Vijayanagara empire from the 1300s to the 1500s because it was well protected by hills on three sides and by a river on the fourth side. Unfortunately, it wasn’t protected enough, since the Muslims destroyed the city later on – I think they must have parachuted in to sneak past the natural defenses. Or maybe they used a Trojan Elephant.
Anyway, the ruins were immense and were really a 1-2 day event to do it justice. But the nicest thing about going to Hampi was that we drove around in our air-conditioned SUV instead of sweating it out in the heat like all the other poor travelers. They should invent an air-conditioned jump suit that you can walk around in – kinda like a spacesuit, except equipped with a microphone/speaker system to allow you to communicate with those poor chaps who are walking around sans A/C spacesuit. Since an A/C spacesuit would probably be a wee bit on the heavy side, the manufacturers might want to think about making it from space-age lightweight materials. Perhaps some titanium alloys of some sort. Maybe some memory foam. Or at least use some materials invented by NASA. Fortunately, it’s a spacesuit, which lends itself very quickly to use NASA-invented materials.
After returning to Hospet, we had lunch and got through the remainder of the wedding. And after a few more hours, we packed 10 of us into an SUV for the 8 hour drive back to Gulbarga.
Monday, March 3rd to Tuesday, March 4th
Last night, we arrived pretty late at my mom’s family’s house. The families of my mother’s three younger brothers live here in the same house that my mom grew up in. Yes, you read that right – all three families. This isn’t completely unheard of in India, though it is rarer and rarer. For us visitors though, it makes it much nice – we only have to visit one house instead of three!
We didn’t do a lot during our brief stay here. Really we were just here to spend time with family that we hadn’t seen in years and years and years. My mother’s family owns a small factory that makes nails and pots and pans and buckets and other metal goods, which they sell from a hardware shop in town. When we were younger, my parents would bring us to India every other summer, and we’d spend weeks on end here. At that time, the factory hadn’t been built, so there were workers in the backyard of the house who were making pots and pans by hand by pounding on flat sheet metal with hammers. We’d spend the day watching them, flying kites, playing cards, running down the street spinning a bicycle tire with a stick (which was surprisingly enjoyable), or playing shop in the shop. There were no televisions, no video games, no movies, and no internet.
On Tuesday afternoon, my sister, father, and I loaded our luggage back into the SUV and drove back to Hyderabad where we had initially picked up the SUV and our driver Rais. Along the way, we watched an old Bollywood movie called “Raja Hindustani” in the SUV. But before we discuss this particular movie, I think it might be prudent to explain the basic rules for making a good Bollywood movie to those of you who have not been exposed to this very unique artform.
- By definition, Bollywood movies are musicals.
- The male and female leads (also known as the hero and heroine) are not required to have singing or lip synching skills to star in a movie. It is perfectly acceptable and even somewhat expected that the singing voice and the speaking voice of the hero(ine) are inexplicably different.
- By definition, Bollywood movies are cheesy.
- If for whatever reason, the hero or heroine should so choose to sing a song or just a random verse using their own voice, the singing is horribly bad.
- By definition, Bollywood movies require an unnecessary level of overacting.
- There should be at minimum 1-2 songs during which the hero and heroine change clothes multiple times for no apparent reason. These clothing changes occur instantaneously, without pause for the musicians to take a bathroom break. Very rude.
- The standard movie has a pure-hearted sometimes-wealthy heroine, who falls in love with an often-poor hero, who her father completely disapproves of. Generally towards the end of the movie, the father comes around and sees that our hero is a good person and that his daughter’s happiness is paramount. And there will be much rejoicing.
- Bald people are not to be trusted.
- The hero should always be clean-shaven.
- Men with beards and goatees are not to be trusted.
- Moustaches generally signal a potential penchant towards evilness, leaving the audience to wonder if this person is really evil or not.
- Women with white hair are not to be trusted.
- Women with a streak of white hair in the middle of their naturally black hair are most definitely not to be trusted. The white streak signifies pure evil.
- People in masks are not to be trusted. No wait… that rule came from The Princess Bride. (bonus points for whoever can correctly identify the character and actor who said this line)
- Women with an abnormally large or abnormally small bindi (the red dot) on their forehead are not to be trusted. After all, if they could be trusted, then they would have worn a normal bindi. It’s just that simple.
- If there is a fellow with a turban in the movie, he is either an evil villain or he is there for comic relief and will break out in dance at every possible opportunity.
- When men drink, the five o’clock shadows on their faces grow at a very fast pace such that by the end of the song, they look downright unkempt. Drinking = very very bad (with finger wag).
- People who smoke are not to be trusted.
- When there is a musical performance not involving the hero or heroine, somehow the lyrics of this performance are strangely extremely relevant to what’s happening between the hero and heroine at that very point in time. Frequently, the hero and heroine will insert themselves into the performance, whereby the original performers will adjust to their presence as though the intrusion were planned in advance. Others in the audience do not mind this interruption and surprisingly, do not even ask for their money back.
- The hero is generally an amazingly good fighter regardless of his level of physical fitness and tends to be uncommonly strong regardless of the size and tone of his frame. Additionally, he is never encumbered by the clothes/shoes that he might be wearing at that time.
- The hero must get in a fight to protect/rescue/defend the heroine or the heroine’s honour. The heroine does not like seeing the hero fight, and may even react angrily to the hero for engaging in hand-to-hand combat.
- The heroine is always secretly impressed by the hero fighting for her.
- All heroines like to sing and dance in the rain.
- No kissing is allowed during a movie. Instead, all mild petting and sexual innuendo is reflected through song, often involving multiple instantaneous costume changes. This impact is taken a step further if rain is involved.
To the casual observer, it may appear as though I am mocking the Bollywood movie. But this is not true – I mocketh not-eth. After all, Bollywood movies are more popular to more of the earth’s population than Hollywood movies are. And frankly, once you see a few of the movies, they start to grow on you. Though they are filled with an unnecessary amount of drama, in a sense similar to soap operas, they are also feel-good movies. While there are many Hollywood movies that are also feel-good, there are an awful many movies that are crime thrillers or slasher/horror movies or something else that makes you leave the theatre with the heebie-jeebies rather than a happy smile. And I guess I’ve never really completely understood why you would want to pay good money for that.
After watching the 3 hour movie in the car, we arrived at the bus station in Hyderabad. We had booked tickets on an overnight bus that would take us to my father's hometown. This was no luxury bus either, but we'll save that for next time.
So that concludes the first half of the trip on my mom’s side of the family. I’ll do my best to get the second half written up more timely... especially since I'm a week away from my next vacation!
1 comment:
I feel like I was there with you.
And there was much rejoicing.
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