Marriage

I got married to Deepanwita on Jan 27^th, 2004. The marriage was a traditional Bengali marriage. For those who do not know much about Indian marriages, Indian marriages are pretty long compared to Western marriages. The marriage ceremony itself takes place for around 2 days after which the bride leaves her parents house and moves in with the groom. This is followed by receptions and other rituals which run at the groom's place for another day or two. Of course there are sundry other rituals which take place at random points in time and the best part is that the bride and the groom need not be aware of any of these since the family members and relatives are very adept in coming up with the weirdest of customs and rituals at the most inconvenient of times, such as getting a bath before sunrise, staying up awake all throughout the night of the marriage. All in all, it is a a few days full of fun and lots of customs and rituals and of course meeting relatives and friends, many of whom have never met each other before. Oh! and before I forget, an Indian marriage is also a very nice place for eligible brides and grooms to scavenge for suitable matches. I say scavenge becuase the parents of the eligible brides and grooms anyway are much more skillfull in actually hunting for suitable matches for their sons and daughters; novices can only scavenge.

I will try to explain the major steps of the marriages as I progress through the photo gallery.

• Invitation
• Registry.

  Sounds weird but this term is commonly used in India and it means the actual legal part of the marriage involving a court official, some witnesses, and some signatures on an official document which eventually becomes the marriage certificate. This is something that has started quite recently. Earlier Indian marriages had no legal documentation.

• Mehendi.

  For someone who is a stranger to the concept of Mehendi (also called Henna), it is a paste made from a herb. The paste is then used to decorate, sort of like a tattoo, the palm and feet of the bride. Many of Deepanwita's friends in the US refer to Mehendi as a temporary tattoo. Mehendi is almost synonymous with Indian marriages and one can hardly find an Indian marriage where the bride would not be decorated with Mehendi. By the way, once the paste is put on, say the palm, the paste cannot be smeared and the palm has to be kept away from water for quite some time. Now this leads to an interesting technique used by young girls to escape doing any work. Everyone, including some boys, will try to get Mehendi on their hands as soon as possible, thus avoiding having to do work for a considerable part of the day.

• Morning of the day of marriage.

  In the morning of the day of the marriage, representatives of the bride's family come over to the groom's place to bless the groom. Of course the favour is returned with representatives from the grooms side going over to the bride's place to bless the bride. Even though the word 'representative' might suggest something very formal, a typical group of representatives consist of:

  • At least one senior member of the family since blessings are always given to younger people, so there better be at least one representative who is older than the bride or the groom.
  • Some kids and toddlers are invariably sent over since kids are always up to some mischief if they are left at home, so better send them to bless the bride or the groom. Besides, kids are the real representatives of God.
  • Some who were caught off-guard and had already performed their daily ablutions. Just to make it clear, anyone blessing any other person on any kind of ritual, better had taken a bath, else for mysterious reasons, the power of the blessing gets severely attenuated. People who normally like to take a bath early in the morning are prime recruits for this position.
  • At least one person who knows or at least pretends to know a lot about the 'correct ritual of blessing'.
  • At least one person who can carry the stuff that the representatives are supposed to bring along with them. This list of stuff is excruciatingly vague and detailed to the point that no one, and I mean no one, knows the full list.
  • And last but certainly not the least, one or multiple scouts . A scout can be of any age or sex but they normally tend to have achieved puberty. Scouts are essential to Indian marriages and play the part of furthering one of the basic reasons of marriage, the interest of men in women, of women in men, and of men in ... (tauba tauba). Scouts incospicuously take a stock of the attractive males and females in the family of, say the groom, and report back to the bride's family. Actually, good scouts are adept in weeding out married, attractive females and males and report back only the unmarried, so called marriage material. Though, scouts are supposed to be inconspicuous, I have given a very good way of finding out scouts in a set of representatives, i.e. the method of elimination; 'if a person does not fit the description of the other members, then he or she better be a scout'. Of course experienced scouts disguise themselves by doing one of the above things.

• Marriage night.

  The night starts of with both the families trying to do things on time, though a dead man can say that everyone is hopelessly out of time. Everyone is blaming everyone else for being lazy and slow. An unusually large proportion of wristwatches seem to have stopped, or so the excuses go. And everyone needs to go to the restroom that one last time. The bride is in dire straits, hairpins are pinching her scalp, the sari is not fitting correctly, etc. etc. A good number of people are 'working on' her in different disciplines, right from trying to polish any visible bump on the bride's sari, to giving that final coat of nailpolish to her pinky toe nail which I hear is impossible to paint. All this time, the bride is simply praying that she does not have to go to the restroom, cause that would really be a nightmare to manage. If you have seen an Indian bride in her entire glamour and more importantly if you have seen and Indian style restroom, then I suggest you go through the exercise of visually imagining how the bride might even hope/dare to use the restroom.

  In contrast, the groom is more or less left alone to try and balance that impossible topor (a cone shaped headgear worn by Bengali grooms). I personally learnt that such balancing acts better be left to fate, not even chance, though a chin-strap would have helped immensely.

  Once the situation has been brought under control, at least at the groom's house, a large group of people numbering anywhere between 25 to 100 and sometimes even more, set out for the bride's house since the ceremony is to take place there. Upon reaching there, the groom's family ceremoniously wellcomes the groom and his family and friends. Normally, a groom would consider himself lucky if he were to get past this point without having to pay a sizeable ransom to a group of young (at heart) people who try to prevent the groom from entering the bride's house. However, in my case, my mother-in-law, well I guess my would-be mother-in-law at that point of time, ensured that nothing of that sort happened. After this the groom is normally made to sit in a room with bright lights and a seat which has some remote resemblances to kingly thrones of earlier times, or so they say. However, I soon realized that the room and especially its younger visitors make the room have a much strong resemblance to a cage in a zoo, one in which a new panda, the prize possession of the zoo, is on display. The fact is that just as panda's munching on bamboos do not realize (or care) that there are strangers looking at it, so also the bride has to learn quickly to put on a smile on his face and munch on some snacks and beverages.

  Under construction

• The day after.

  Under construction :-)

• Vidai (photos under construction)

  This is the afternoon or the evening of the day after the marriage. This is the saddest part of the marriage as the bride has to 'leave the house of her parents' to start a new home with her husband. Though these days this ritual is merely symbolic yet even till a few years back, daughters could not be legal heirs to their parents' property; the detachment from their parents families was more than symbolic. It is not uncommon to find almost everyone weeping, especially in the bride's family.

• Reception at the grooms places (Boubhat) (photos under construction)

  Traditionally, the bride is supposed to cook for the bride's family the day after she arrives at the bride's house. The word 'boubhat' literally means 'rice cooked by the bride'. Of course no one would eat just rice, so the bride would actually know to cook a few dishes as well. As you can understand, the bride would be prudent to hone her cullinary skills before getting married.

• First marriage anniversary party. Pavani restaurant, Houston, TX, USA.