San San's wedding

Events:

Finally, a chance to draw breath, and record as much of what has happened here as I can remember before I leave here(I'm out of here at 20.15 tonight on a 30 hour, 9 euro train to bombay) and it all becomes a little to dreamlike....so here goes....

Saturday... friday night was spent having some indian food, and later at a gig for amit's brother avinash and his band.....3 more people joined our party in the early hours of saturday morning, davids mum clare, his brother matt and juliet connected to the extended family in ways to complicated to explain now....
there was little chance for anyone to really get any kind of decent rest, before some other dehli based friends of sanhita picked us up and whisked us away on a sari shopping extravaganza.... purchasing the actual sari itself was really quite straightforward.... one stands in front of a counter, while fabric is thrown in front of you, and eventually you either get sick of it all, of happen to actually like one. Luckily the latter happened to me and it was all done and dusted pretty promptly. Having purchased our saris so late, however, we did not have time to get tops custom made, so had to buy one from a street stall....common practise here it would seem..... in practise what this meant was that about 7 of us girls were left standing at a street corner in amidst the din and energy of kolkata, trying on blouses over our tops, and getting interested looks from the locals... we swept on to another shop, where i bought bangles to go with my sari, the girls bought salwar suits and boys were busy getting sherwanis, appropriate for men to wear to a wedding.....back in our hotel later we pracised our range of scottish/irish/east european songs and tunes in anticipation of the cultural evening to be held on the monday

Sunday:

Mehindi.....spent day round sanhita's hanging out and getting to know the other girls in the brides party..... some time in the afternoon, the mehindi(henna) women came and decorated our hand, with beautiful paterns that were a surprisingly intense brown for a couple of days, but which have now faded and are going slightly orangy.....we had to manage not to touch anything for 2 hours, and could not wash our hands till the next day.... it was worth it, though, and garners good favor from all here

Monday:

The first official day of the wedding, cultural performance evening.... after more shoe shopping to complete my wedding outfits, and some frantic last minute practising of our act we prepared ourselves to brave the stage at the cultural performance evening..... members of the groom and brides family are both expected to give some sort of performance..... on the grooms side we were treated to a range of traditional dancing and singing.... on the brides side there was a recital of a famous bengali poem, and well, us........ with our rendition of the scottish traditional air 'Mhairi's wedding'(changed for the occasion to San San's wedding), some traditional scottish dancing from me and five others(more or less indistinguishable from irish dancing so not that much of a leap) and some tin whistle and fiddle playing..... we went down a storm but went home to get an early night in preparation for what awaited us the next day....

Tuesday

The wedding itself....

will come back to this later... but in brief it included... 3 of us girls(elly, emily and myself) round sanhita's from 9 am onwards... ritual... conch blowing....turmeric paste being delivered from one house to another by important family members....sari wearing for beginners....amit arriving to the wedding on a horse.... ritual fire.... marriage....and sanhita looking like a spirit goddess...

Wednesday

Went to the indian coffee house, a place i think might be something of a spiritual home should i spend longer in kolkata...

the reception....with a suprising lack of dancing ... this marked the return of the sanhita we all know and love from the spirit plane she appeared to inhabit the previous day to the earthly realm....

Thursday

Recovery and preparation for my onward journey

Thoughts:

too many thoughts to get into here, but will record them later... thinking bout various themes including multilingualism in india, how shopping here resembles more the shopping in europe before the department store, the kolkata bourgeoise, feminism, tradition and the wedding ceremony and many more things.... will post some more thought when i get a chance...

lots of love

Roisin