Rajasthani Wedding

Guys I met on the train, with some local kids in the background
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After a week in Rajasthan, it was time to regroup. I was out of slide film, my camera was jamming from intrusive red dust and sand, and all my clothes and bags were filthy. The cold temperatures of Rajasthan dissuaded me from traveling even farther north to Kashmir, so instead I decided to head south to Kerala or Gujarat, with a stopover in Mumbai to get my things together.

After visiting Karni Mata, I boarded a local train to Jodhpour, where I had a next day flight to Mumbai. As usual, as soon as I got on, I struck up a conversation with local college students traveling to a friend’s wedding. Here is how a situation like this works in India: During the first five minutes, there are hellos and introductions. If you can talk about cricket, this is the easiest ice breaker, but showing pictures on your digital camera works just as well. Within 10 minutes, people from adjoining seats gather around you, interested in everything you have to say about India and your own country. At the nearest station, your companions buy you chai and local snacks from the platform vendor without even asking, not wanting you to pay for anything. Within half an hour, you are practicing your Hindi and playing cards with them. Pretty soon, they invite you to their houses or to join them wherever they are going. The best part is that you don’t have to be an extrovert to experience that. I am pretty shy, so I don’t normally get this kind of interaction anywhere, but in India it happens every day.

-Baldev, tell me more about your bride. Is she pretty?

Some fun before the wedding. Playing cricket.
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Well, this is exactly what happened to me. As the students were getting ready to get off the train somewhere in a place too small even for the Lonely Planet guidebook, they said:

-Pawel, you should come with us to the wedding. Have you ever seen a Rajasthani wedding?

-Guys, but it’s not your wedding. Shouldn’t the groom or the bride invite me?

-Don’t worry; both families will be honored if you come. Quick, the train is stopping here only for five minutes.

One of the village elders
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-[grabbing my bags] Shit, I hope you are right. Where are we anyway?

-Merta, but the wedding is in a village 20 kilometers away.

And so I went. After all, I don’t have to be in any particular place at any time. Being invited to a wedding in Rajasthan is not something that happens everyday. It turned out that my flight to Mumbai could be postponed by one day without problems (as a matter of fact, due to a travel agent mistake, I did not have the reservation for my original travel date anyway).

Sadu- a village holy man
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They took me to the village, where I became an instant sensation. Local kids followed me like a famous cricket player (it’s good to bring sweets for the kids), so much so that my friends were shooing them away. The elders were very friendly and indeed seemed honored that I came. I was always getting the best seats at the ceremony, the best food, and everybody wanted to talk to me. The students were brimming with joy because I was their friend, after all. They carried my bags for me everywhere.

Trying on a turban. It's not my best look, but the villagers were impressed.
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I was invited to several other houses during a personal tour of the village, and drank so much chai that by the end of the evening, I was simply chai’d-out. I slept in the groom’s house, on the roof (as the night was warm for a change) with 30 other male guests. Actually, there was little sleeping, as the night was spent discussing everything from local customs to the Kashmir conflict. These people, when they invite you as their guest, truly believe just like we do in Poland: “Guest in the house is like God in the house”. At night, they locked my camera and other belongings under a key, so the kids would not touch them. All the while, the students did not leave me for a second, introducing me to everyone and teaching proper customs: You greet people with your hands at your heart in a prayer position, saying “Ram Ram Sa” - but only the first time you see them. You don’t greet children or women, unless they are old enough to be grandmothers. You don’t talk to women or eat with them.

Procession to the bride's village
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The entire Indian culture is so unique in its treatment of women that it’s mind-boggling. I don’t even know where to start. Somebody once said that India is a country of women-haters and mother-lovers. A woman who bears a son is treated like a goddess, but until then she is the lowest slave in the husband’s household. There is a lot of truth to it. Soon after a wedding, if a woman’s family doesn’t pay enough dowry, the groom’s family often kills the new wife by setting her on fire with gasoline (in Delhi alone, there were 500 torching cases like this last year!). The poor woman’s family often doesn’t report the death to the police, because they are too ashamed to let the community know how poor they are.

Colors at the wedding procession
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Equally shocking to an average Western mind is that, in the country of Kamasutra and Khajuraho temples (those with the famous erotic statues), the interaction between men and women is a cultural taboo. The India of Kamasutra and Khajuraho no longer exists. Like the pyramids to the modern Egypt, it is an ancient history that seems to have been created by a completely different civilization. I got to talk to the groom during that night on the roof:

-Baldev, tell me more about your bride. Is she pretty?

Riding to the bride's village-Indian style, on the roof of a bus.
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-I don’t know, I have never seen her.

-When will you see her? You are getting married tomorrow.

-I get to see her after the wedding.

-What if you are unhappy in your marriage?

More dancing, luckily they let me take off the turban.
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-I hope to have a better luck in the next life. Marriage is not about happiness, it is about responsibility.

…and this guy studies medicine in a big city in Rajasthan, and has a cell phone with an mp3 player and more functions than my Motorola. Speaking of cell phones, the entire village has no plumbing, villagers are mostly poor, illiterate farmers, and electricity runs three hours in the evening only, but the cell phone reception is better than in D.C. The farmers are proud of their cell phones and keep messaging each other constantly.

Groom arriving at the bride's village. He is greeted by his future mother-in-law.
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They say that in the West, you marry a woman you love, but in India you love a woman you marry. Divorces are virtually non-existent, and for some people this is proof that the Indian culture is much more stable than the Western one. I think life is more complicated than this, even in India. Here, a divorced woman is a social pariah, destined to spend the rest of her life in misery. Women in unhappy marriages have no choice but to endure any abuse from their husbands or mothers-in-law. The alternative is simply worse than death.

Groom's turban
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The next day, the wedding took place. The explosion of colors, the dancing, the wedding ceremony and all the customs associated with it are simply too intricate and too elaborate for me to describe here, so I’ll let you get the feeling from the attached pictures. My bus is about to arrive in Jodhpur and I have to catch my plane to Mumbai.