Wedding-palooza

And we’re back! 

our Telugu teacher is an awesome singer

Life is speeding up and the semester’s already half over! Whaaaaat. I’ve been staying busy, mostly working at Lebenshilfe and trying to find my footing there, observing in the different classrooms and therapy rooms, and trying to figure out what the heck I’m doing that is contributing to my project. I often feel like I’m studying AROUND my actual research topic, but Dr. Nuckolls seems pleased with my progress, so I think I need to give myself a bit more credit. I AM learning a ton, and I’m still so grateful for 1)the opportunity to be here 2)all the help I receive 3)how kind and gracious everyone is. Apart from Lebenshilfe, we’ve been having our Telugu classes regularly, so we’re picking it up, bit by little bit. I feel like we have about as much speech as a toddler…Mom, Dad, elephant, want, today, tomorrow, good, bad, etc. We’ve memorized about 4 sanskrit poems so far, and we have to memorize how to write them and 3 other poems in Telugu for our final in April.

Christian and a beautiful little girl in the yoga therapy room

Chennari's birthday...it's blurry, but they're so stinkin cute!

 

Pre-wedding Henna fiesta

The last few weeks have been a little unusual, though. I already made mention of the weddings, but here is a bit more detail from my journal:

 On February 13^th, we went to Madhu’s cousin’s wedding, and it was way cool, though a little anticlimactic, truth be told. Not because the wedding wasn’t wonderful, mostly I think because we were expecting more of a party party, not a stand-around-and-chat party. Madhu takes excellent care of us and tries to keep us from making more of a spectacle of ourselves than we already are, so he put the kibosh on dancing.

Eva+children+dance music=unamused Madhu

The wedding block

 We managed a few moves before he caught us, though. But we looked so good!...in my humble opinion. When Gowri, Sailaja and Chennari sent us of in the rickshaws, I felt like we were a bunch of Cinderellas in our fancy sarees. We met Madhu at a block that had been partitioned off for the wedding, then got in line to meet the bride and groom. Maybe it was just bad timing on our part for seeing them, but they looked pretty miserable….but it’s no wonder! They hadn’t slept for forever, they didn’t eat all day (the actual ceremony is quite long, and they can’t take breaks for the bride and groom to answer nature’s call), they’re greeting a TON of people they’ve never met before and will probably never see again, and they really don’t know each other at all. Regardless of how tired and hungry they felt, they were still so sweet and asked us to please stay for the ceremony (which started at 3:59 AM…) The decorations were phenomenal, though. There were lights lining the streets and an alley and been turned into the dance area. Super cool.

 

We met Madhu’s family and we all went up on a rooftop to watch all the festivities and saw fireworks going off. There was a little girl who was practicing her English with me and she kept insisting all night that I would come visit her house sometime. She even had me meet her parents and grandparents. They were all so sweet and very kind. We ate some dinner but we were getting tired and Madhu and his brother were getting worried about us being around the inebriated weddings guests, so they took us home at around 11 pm. No official marriage witnessing for us.

We're twins. Can't you see it? I need me a nose ring.

Wedding round 2

The next day we went to Raja Lakshmi’s (our translator) niece’s wedding. This one was super interesting because we got to see a lot more of it (the actual ceremony started at 12:45 am, so we stayed until about 2 am), it was Brahmin wedding, so there were a bunch of traditions we wouldn’t have seen otherwise, and we had a bit of time to bond with the bride and groom. Apparently, this was an arranged marriage as well (the vast majority of marriages are) but they were engaged for quite a while because of her schooling, so they had a good amount of time to get to know each other and fall in love. It was so fun to see them sneak smiles at one another throughout the afternoon and evening!

mid-festivity wardrobe change (some people may change up to 10 times)

With Raja Lakshmi. Means....we love her.

Not-so-secret love! EEE!!!

the bride is first blessed while sitting in the flower box, and is then carried out  by her father and brothers.

We were present for the sugar water sprinkling/drinking ceremony(we were unaware this had commenced, so we were caught quite unawares by a woman spraying us with water, seemingly appropos of nothing) where the bride and groom’s families exchange gifts and the main part of the actual wedding ceremony, but we left after they washed each others’ feet, finally had the swastik sheet between them dropped, and they smashed a leaf full of cumin and jaggery paste on each others’ heads. (What IS jaggery, anyway? No one knows…..just kidding mom, I just googled it.) We got to see at least 4 of the bride’s 6 sarees (all of which were incredibly beautiful) and we met some really nice people, though there was no dancing and people were still trying to surreptitiously sneak pictures of us with their phones. I really rather miss blending in. Anyway, we found an upstairs balcony to hang out and talk to kill time. Some of the kids at the reception had the same idea, so we played with them and it was fun getting to know them.

We had some free time to take pictures up on the roof...

I know I've joked about arranged marriage in the past, mostly to get out of the hassle of dating, and I really would trust my parents to choose very well for me (neither just my mom or just my dad....no offense....that's why you make a great team!), and I certainly see its merit in this culture (and in many others, actually) but no way, Jose. I actually had a dream that I had an arranged marriage and I woke up in a cold sweat. I'll pick my hubs, thank you very much!

We were really lucky to go to such an event, but I was surprised because it wasn’t really what I was expecting. Overall, it was beautiful, colorful, symbolic, long, well-documented (a floodlight was pointed at the bride and groom for about 13 hours straight so that the photographers and videographers would always have a good shot) and happy. From what I understand, an Indian wedding isn’t about the bride and groom per se, but more about the excitement of joining two whole families, which is really cool. At the same time, it also made me all the more grateful for the peace and sheer bliss of a temple sealing. It’s just about the couple and God. Simple. Beautiful. Perfect. I kept thinking about Jared and Tiffany’s sealing in the LA temple and why it is that I consider that to be one of the best days of my life...I mean, I wasn’t even there for the majority of the wedding festivities, but it’s because that of that feeling in the temple…ay that FEELING!! It’s the most amazing thing. I love that it brings the whys of God’s plan into beautiful, soul-expanding clarity. I hope the bride and groom felt a bit like that on their wedding day :). Everyone should feel that at some point!

Needless to say, the wedding week geared us up for a wedding FRENZY a few days later when we were stuck inside for a couple days because of a strike with nothing to do but pinterest engagement rings and watch wedding videos. But more on that later, so I can post this darn thing!

Love you all more than all the rice thrown at an Indian wedding!!

-Allison