Sunday morning brought with it an air of excitement. First of all, it wasn’t raining. But more importantly, today Ashok and Soumya’s wedding! Rachel and I had been looking forward to this day for two weeks. After waking up early to go to Mass, I rushed back to our apartment to start getting ready. As we buttoned our blouses and slipped on our skirts, we could hardly wait for Nitu to arrive and help us drape our sarees. We applied our makeup with much more precision than usual, making sure to add the signature “Indian” eyeliner. All that really meant was heavy black eyeliner. We finished our hair and put on our bindis just as Nitu walked in. Even though she had her own function to go to that day, she made the time to come over and help us. We were so grateful! It felt like she was our fairy godmother getting us ready for the ball. If you could see the saree before it was draped and after, you would think it was magic too! It still amazes me that you can turn a rectangular piece of fabric into a beautiful dress with a fold here and pleat there. We couldn’t thank Nitu enough! After making sure she had pinned everything down, showing us how to pick up the front so we could walk, and a few pictures, Nitu saw us off in an auto. We called out our thanks once more and waved goodbye. I laughed as images of Cinderella waving goodbye to her fairy godmother from the carriage popped into my head.
When we arrived at the beautiful hall, we could hardly believe how packed it was! When we noticed that people were staring at us (more than normal), we quickly found some seats. We were a bit warm and getting around in a full-length dress is never easy, but we were so glad to finally be there! We spent the first ten minutes just taking in everything. The enormous hall barely held the close to 1000 people there, everyone sat in plastic chairs facing the stage, and the bride and groom sat in what looked like thrones on stage. All the women wore flowers in their hair; the bride’s entire braid was covered! Bright red and yellow flower streamers decorated the top of the stage and the couple’s backdrop, and a live band filled the air with a lively tune.
After an hour or so, we saw a friend from work who came over and explained some of the different things to us. Soon it was time to “well wish” the couple. The line snaked through the entire hall, and Rachel and I were a little shocked to see that the tradition is to throw rice on top of the bride’s and groom’s heads! When it was finally our turn, we were excited to see the beautiful bride up close and thank them both for inviting us. We even got to take pictures with them!
Then it was time for lunch! We went upstairs to a different banquet hall where it was even more packed! As we squeezed through the crowds, our coworkers advised that we all sit down for a while to wait for things to calm down. As we sat and talked, it was fun to see all the different sarees the women wore, the little kids running around, and all the families. We even saw several more people we know from work. Finally we stood up and went to wait for an open table. Against one side of the room was the buffet line and people filled the chairs scattered about with their plates on their laps. On the other side of the room were lines of narrow tables. Chairs were on one side of the tables, creating an isle for waiters to walk between two rows. After diving into two open chairs, we settled in to see what lunch would be!
The waiters rolled a kind of thin plastic tablecloth on the tables and then placed a water glass and a large banana leaf before each person. As we looked around to see what we should be doing, we saw everyone washing their leaves. So we washed our leaves
and held them up to dry as our coworkers laughed at our obvious lack of experience. The poor people who sat beside us; we asked them so many questions! When the waiters came by, they came two at a time carrying an enormous pot of the given course and just plopped whatever it was on your leaf with a giant spoon. The first course consisted of a kind of potato nut salad, some pickles, and another rustic salad. Then we had roti (a thin bread), papad (a thin crispy bread), and about four different gravies poured over rice. Rachel and I had no idea what we were eating, but that didn’t slow us down! What did slow us down was eating with our fingers. It is definitely a skill that we are working on, but it always feels weird to have food all over your fingers. It seemed like we had hardly started on one course by the time the next came! And then after turning down an additional two courses, it was time for dessert. They first came around with these dessert balls with nuts and I have no idea what else. I didn’t like them very much, but Rachel didn’t mind finishing mine off for me. Then came what tasted like hot baked, spiced fruit. It tasted like the filling of an apple pie right out of the oven, mmm. Then was the final round, ice cream. We knew how to eat that. We could hardly believe how quickly the meal had gone and how tasty it was. After washing our hands, we went back downstairs to see the bride and groom one more time. We took another picture with Ashok and Soumya, and Soumya thoughtfully comment on how nice we both looked in traditional clothes. Then it was time to leave, and we thanked our coworkers for taking us under their wing and
explaining everything to us. It had been a wonderful day, and we were looking forward to lying out by the pool for a few hours while enjoying the beautiful sunshine.
When we arrived home, we had the task of getting out of our sarees. Much easier than getting into them, it still required a bit of work to unwrap ourselves, given that Nitu had pinned us in so we couldn’t mess them up. After finally managing to get out of our sarees, we got into our bathing suits with much more efficiency. Lying out, and hopefully getting a tan, was the perfect way to finish off our fun day. But our day wasn’t over yet! While we were at the pool, three engineering students from Delhi wandered out to enjoy the water. We talked with them a while, going over some differences between American and Indian culture, the education system here, and even touching on the latest cricket match. We decided to go to dinner together at Planet Café where we talked more. It was a lot of fun and really nice to hang out with some kids our age. After dinner we went to play some pool, but with the disclaimer that Rachel and I were horrible. Despite our lack of talent, it was a lot of fun. We felt like college kids again! After driving around for a bit and hearing about life in Manipal, we stopped to try “pan.” It is a natural breath freshener made of the leaf of a pan tree. According to my later research, it has beatle nut, "Kaththa", mint, rose, elichi, fennel seeds and other flavors and also thin shaves of flavored nuts. It looked like a regular leaf, a bit smaller than your hand, piled high with different Indian spices and seeds. You just rolled the whole thing up and put it in your mouth. Rachel’s face said it all, but I figured I had to at least try this thing. It tasted like a mix between mint and perfume and flowers and fennel seeds. It was horrible, but we did our best to keep straight faces. As we got into the car I tried to figure out how I could get rid of this thing, and when I looked over and saw Rachel tossing hers out the window, I quickly did the same thing hoping they wouldn’t see us.
When we got back to our apartment building, we thanked our new friends for a fun night and promised to get together again soon. As Rachel got ready for bed, I skyped home to wish my dad a happy father’s day. By the time we crawled into bed, we were so tired from our day. We got to see an Indian wedding, learned a lot more about Indian food, effectively mastered eating with one hand, and even made some new friends! What a good day!
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