more malaria and marriage madness

This past week has been a series of ups and downs that is making me slowly lose my mind. I have been homesick a lot, I think mostly because I’ve been sick in bed, feeling weak and tired, so I’ve had nothing to do or think about but coming home again. On the other hand, I’ve been helping to reserve hotels and make some travel arrangements for mom and dad when they come, which is peaking my interest in traveling once again. I think that at this point that is what I am more interested in doing in terms of my time here. The frustration of feeling like I’m not actually doing much to help or to make a difference has really hit me hard the past week or so. Now that I am feeling better from my bout of malaria, I’m just looking forward to the part of my trip that involves the traveling. Too bad that is still another three months away…

I went to my first Indian wedding this weekend. It was a two-day affair of absolutely mayhem. I’m not entirely sure whether I actually enjoyed it or not, I’m still processing the insanity of it all. I’m not exactly sure whose wedding it was that we were at. We were invited by Ries, one of the rickshaw drivers who always waits at the edge of Qazi camp on Berasia Road, and I think that it was his brother-in-law that was getting married, but we’ll never know for sure. Anyway, we were told to meet Ries’s at his house, where we went to dinner last week for Eid, and that they would take us to the venue on Saturday nights. Well, Ries lives on the other side of Berasia Road, where I a not so familiar with the streets. We were headed in what I thought was the right direction, and rounded a bend to see somewhere in ballpark of two hundred men dancing in the street to music pumping out of loudspeakers on a truck. All at once, every face in the crowd turned and faced our little group, with me at the front. And then we were descended upon like vultures to a carcass. Every guy in the street surrounded us to ask us questions and say hello, but mostly just to stare with the most unabashed intensity.

At first I wasn’t entirely convinced that we were in the right place at all, since we seemed to have stumbled upon an enormous street party, and there wasn’t a familiar face in sight. After a few minutes though, there was a ruckus on the street behind us, and when I turned around I saw the groom approaching on a large white horse. At that point a semi-hysterical Ries jumped out from somewhere shoving us next to the horse so that our photo could be taken with the groom on his horse. Men were jumping around like Mexican jumping beans, shooting prays of party foam, and showering the crowd in sparkly confetti. After being sufficiently stared and photographed for about twenty minutes, all six of us were ushered into a Honda civic decorated with ribbons and marigolds. The car lined up behind the truck with the sound system, so we got to watch all of the men bump and grind with one another behind the speakers.

We were moving along at a snails pace, but I expected that we would speed up once we got out to Berasia Road again. However, we didn’t move much more once we got to Berasia as we inched along with the throng of pelvic thrusting dudes in front of us, setting off fireworks at regular intervals along the street. Our car stopped numerous times, and we were told to get out a couple of times so that we could watch the fireworks. As we stood about ten feet from where they were setting off long rows of cracking fireworks, I was a little nervous that a) I was going to go deaf from the blasts and b) either myself or one of the guys setting off the fireworks were going to get their face blown off. Eventually, Derek, Aio, Prabjit and I got into the car with Salman’s younger brother, Azmat, while Ruskin and Eurig were shuffled off into an open jeep of young men. We crawled along the street for about two and a half hours before we actually made it to the wedding reception. The whole procession was absolutely insane, since most of the guys who had been dancing had packed themselves three to a motorcycle, and were following the sound system with great reverie.

Once we arrived at the actually cite of the wedding, Prabjit and I were let to a separate area that was just for the women, where, once again, we were descended upon by everyone curious to know why there was a foreigner at the wedding. Although, after being stuck in a procession with a hundreds of gyrating men I was somewhat relieved to find out that there were also women at the wedding, the women were perhaps even more overwhelming than the men. Ries’ sister-in-law dragged me around by the arm, and up onto the stage where the bride-to-be was sitting with her eyes downcast, looking a lot like she was about to slit her wrists. I sat for a minute in silence, no sure whether I should say something to her or not, since no one else was talking to her, and then blurted out “congratulations?” with a confused smile. I saw her eyes flicker up at me as she tried to repress a smile, and I figured that my work here was done ☺ Melanie told me that the tradition in India is that the sadder the bride looks on her wedding day, the happier the marriage is supposed to be. I think it is also supposed to be symbolic of her being sad about leaving her parents’ home and family. Anyway, call me culturally insensitive, but I thought that it was the most insane thing ever. After that we were lead to a tent full of house wares and furniture, which I was told were “wedding gifts” (read: dowry according to Prabjit) to which I responded something along the lines of “Oh, isn’t that nice”.

Salman’s family was there, and his mother tried her best to protect us from the throng of women obsessed with introducing me to every member of their family and general fawning over the angreez. Very quickly after being introduced to the bride, we were lead to a tent over on the groom’s side, where all the men were hanging out, to eat dinner. We were pretty much the last people to arrive, and therefore the last people to eat, so I had some slightly cold rice and aloo curry with a puri, while being talked at by the extremely nervous brother of the groom. He was obviously wanted to impress everyone at the wedding, and felt particularly compelled to welcome us whities to the ceremony. About a minute into our conversation he told me that I was “doing good work here with the backwards people in India”… to which I responded “thank you,” and “I think” under my breath. He also insisted on telling us about fifty times that we were “lightening up the occasion” while deliberately turning his back to Prabjit while he said this.

At this point it was about one-thirty at night, so Ries told us that he would arrange for us to take a car home again. We milled around the outside of the venue (which was basically a large tent in a field) until a battered white Ambassador pulled up, and we all piled in. The drive home on the empty night streets took about five minutes in contrast to two-and-a-half hours that it took to get there. Also, I would point out that we spent less than an hour at the wedding itself. We missed the actual ceremony, which apparently took another two hours, since Salman’s mother told us that she was there until three-thirty in the morning. Prabjit told me afterwards that the first night of the wedding is about the bride’s departure from her family, while the second night is about celebrating the newlyweds joining, which might explain the whole procession thing about our arrival. At any rate, we arrived back at Sambhavna slightly after two in the morning, and, speaking for myself anyway, half insane from the evening’s events.

Now, the second night of the wedding Salman’s mom had invited us over to their house so that she could help us to put on our sari’s properly. We went over at seven o’clock, since the evening’s festivities were to start at eight instead of ten. It took the better part of an hour for Salman’s mom and younger sister to mummify both Prabjit and I in our saris, which made me realize why so many women wear salwar suits instead. I wasn’t entirely convinced I actually looked good at the end of it all, either, since I felt like I was about three times my actual width from all of the material wrapped around me. Salaman’s mom also put some large white costume jewelry on me as well, so that I looked like a proper lady for the wedding. We spent another hour waiting for the rickshaws to arrive to drive us there, and finally piled into three rickshaws and sped off to a different place that the previous night. Again, it was basically a huge open field fenced in by white cloth, with separate entrances for men and women.

Now, I had thought that there were a lot of people at the first evening’s celebration, but that was nothing compared to the number of people who were at the second night! I would have guestimated that there was somewhere in the ballpark of five hundred men women and children happily chowing down on mutton biryani, pani puri and a variety of other things. Being overly cautious of buffet food in general, I insisted on having veg food with Prabjit, so after a slight tug-of-war with Ries’ pushy sister-in-law about when I would have my photo taken with the bride and groom (they shared a stage this evening), Prabjit and I were lead over to an empty corner where the veg food was being served. It being a Muslim wedding I suppose that most of the guests were Muslim, so the veg buffet was pretty much deserted. We actually ate in relative peace, and were then lead over to the bride and groom to have our photos taken with them and the rest of the family.

After that we all piled into a rickshaw and made in home relatively early, or at least compared with the previous evening. Eurig, Prabjit and I had a few beers while discussing the evening’s events. Unfortunately, I think the residual malaria or possibly the med made the alcohol an unpleasant combination, and I have spent all of today feeling horribly depressed an sad. Note to self: no more alcohol for at least another week, and hopefully then my liver will have had a chance to recover from the malaria…

In other news, Aio also has malaria, although he seems to be coping with it pretty well. Salman, too, has malaria, and I found out about and hour ago that Dr. Quaiser, the allopathic doctor who prescribed my chloroquine, also has malaria. I guess that it is going around.