Technically the photo above was from Wedding Day Three, even though it was the middle of the night inbetween Day Two and Three. Rob was fast asleep and I heard what sounded like a parade out on the street. Not being accustomed to parade activity at 1:30 in the morning, I looked out my window and saw lighted canopies going by with clapping and shouting and a brass band playing. Someone was riding a white horse. People were dancing. It was a groom arriving at his reception. It's wedding season, and during wedding season, one expects to see lights and music and grooms parading by. Even in the middle of the night.
I woke up the next morning with deepened henna hands. It was the second of several surprises that day.
The only scheduled event we had on Wedding Day Three was the ring ceremony in the evening. So the ladies said we're all going shopping. We headed to Bilbar, premiere dress shop of Ludhiana. This was not shopping as we know it in the U.S. All the women, plus Rob, entered into a three story fabric paradise. Walls and walls of stacks and stacks of sarees and tunics and leggings and scarves. It was an explosion of color. The only way it could have been better would be to have Em and Claire with us there. I vow to return one day with them in tow.
We were in the north of India, in the Punjab state, which is home to much of the Sikh population. The store was staffed only by men, primarily Sikh men. As you can see, the women sit on couches and point one direction or another, and the men scramble to open up saree after saree after saree, shaking them out so that they unfurl and drape across the floor, and then stacking layer on top of layer as the women decide which colors, which fabrics. The piles of color grow until someone scoops the giant mound away and tosses it on to an even bigger mound for someone to sort through and fold up later. And the process begins again.
Now, it didn't take me long to figure out that at Bilbar, it was every woman for herself. Each of the women I was with was on a mission. This was one of the finest dress shops and they were in buying mode. I was left dumbfounded and bewildered, especially since my mission (buying something for myself for wedding day) and need for instruction and clarification was not easily communicated to a staff who spoke not a word of English. They brought out fabrics, wrapped them around me, twirled me in front of mirrors. I eventually figured out the hard way that once you chose a fabric, they take your measurements and then sew it up for you. I learned this when two men kept following me around with measuring tapes, lifting my shirt, and sticking their hands down the waistband of my skirt. I chose a glorious teal embroidered fabric which I was told would be made into a ghagra choli - a skirt and top, with scarf. They asked me questions in Punjabi which I tried in vain to get the group to respond to. The group was busy. I was pretty sure I was buying a ghagra choli, and two salwar kameezes. But I couldn't be sure.
Rob was surprised to hear that they didn't take AmEx. So as he's using another credit card, the salesmen asks him for a copy of his passport for ID. He watched as they handed his passport to some boy who quickly ran out the front door with it. The closest copier was down the street. Of course.
When I found a scarf that I wanted to add to the purchase, Rob's second attempt at using his card was denied. Apparently using a card once in a foreign country is okay but twice looks like fraud to the good folks at VISA. The Sikh's answer was to use the ATM. Rob was told that there were three ATM's close by. See if you can spot the ATM below. Neither could Rob.
Eventually he found all three and none were working (two did not seem to be attached to a power source). So a friend lent us the money and all was well. We were assured that my wedding outfit would be delivered the next day to the hotel, and the other two outfits on the following day. I hoped I hadn't made a huge mistake.
The ring ceremony was scheduled for 9 pm that night which means the Hummels show up at 10:00 and there's no one there but the groom's family. We linger outside until we can't linger any longer. We walk through the reception line of men on the left and sparkling saree-ed women on the right. There was no one that had gone before us, so we didn't know if we were to shake hands or smile and nod. We smiled and nodded.
The bride and groom at some point exchanged rings, but that part of it must have been fairly discreet because I just realized that we never saw them actually exchanging rings. But we watched for a long time as the bride and groom sat in the middle of an elaborate stage while family and friends gave them gifts, blessed them with money waved over their heads, and posed with them for photos.
Below is Namit with the twins, along with Anshul, another of Namit's childhood friends who work at Prime Focus. It's amazing to watch all the friends together. They talk in a kind of short hand, in a way that is more like relatives than friends. And I suspect that Namit has been the leader of the group for a long long time.
There was a lot of gift-giving, and blessing, and posing. And then the performances began. That's what everyone was waiting for. The performances are given by family and friends. In this case, it was the groom's cousins. They had gotten together to practice a number of intricate Bollywood dances. First the girls. Then the guys. Then the guys and the girls. Later, Neha, sister of the bride, said that it's one thing to have professional dancers perform for you, but quite another to have people that know you and love you perform for you. She said it was one of the best parts of her own wedding. Rob has video of it which I'll post another time. It's hard for photos to capture the frenzy and the cheering.
Then everyone joined in.
Yes, everyone.
And last but not least is some video of Rob dancing with Shilpa, until Shilpa discovers that I'm not on the dance floor and tells me that staying on the side lines is "not allowed!" (Click on photo below to start video.)
If someone would have said to me that one day I would be awakened by a parade in the middle of the night, be startled by the henna-ed patterns on my hands, get wrapped in brilliant silks by Sikhs, and Bollywood-dance with Rob, I would have said they were crazy. But somehow it all felt normal and right. The extraordinary didn't lose one ounce of its extraordinariness, but somehow, in the middle of it all, the extraordinary became ordinary. The rules changed. We became (for a time) Indian. Where surprises are the norm.
No comments:
Post a Comment