Indian Wedding Festivities

I write this from a salon/spa in Rajamundy, a city in southern India. I am here for my dear friend, Srihimaja’s wedding.

As I write this, the fan is on to create a rustle of breeze in the 80 degree weather.

For those who don’t know, Indian weddings are huge, multi-affairs. My friend, Sri told me that hers is a small wedding with only about 400 people attending. A big one would be upwards of 1000.

But it’s not only the number of people who attend, but also the festivities of the multiple-day affair, leading up to the actual wedding ceremony.

I’ve been fed. Lots. I’ve enjoyed mint rice and curd rice and pumpkin curry and raitha and idli with sambar and chutnets, and a sour mango dal that was so delicious I swore I could eat it every day of my life.

Mixing the rice and dal together, as I’ve been taught, with lemon or grape (that was a new one) pickle on the side, I ate with my hands such as I’ve been taught.

With my hands adorned with henna and gold bangle bracelets dangling from my wrists, and I take it all in—

South India bears resemblance in many ways to my time spent in Indonesia—the nosiness of the traffic with the incessant honking and motorcyclists who create their own lanes, weaving in and out of car lanes like water amongst streams in the river. The dustiness dirt remind of the dry season of Central Java as well, despite coconut trees in the backdrop. The reddish dirt brings to mind Zimbabwe’s earth roads.

Today I walked up and down the Godavari river, dipped my feet in, gazed upon the Godavari Goddess and watched men take running leaps into the river. The two bridges set overhead, running parallel.

As I write this, my stomach tingles from the mixture of the hot spices from my lunch.

I’m probably more familiar with Indian culture(s) than many Americans, I’ve always taken an interest in the foods, cultures, languages. It’s a delight to be here to celebrate this special time for my friend—

But what has given me greatest pause and reflection here is the culture of extended family.

I’ve been told from others, who grow up in more collectivist and community-centered cultures, like Indian and Kenyan ones, that when you marry, you marry into the family, his into yours, and yours into his.

It’s interesting that my friend, the bride, is not even allowed to set eyes on the groom until an exact time on the wedding, an auspicious time. Similar, I suppose, to the western way of wedding tradition where we aren’t supposed to see the groom before the wedding, otherwise it’s considered bad luck. Although with this, it’s an exact time, down to the minute.

What I stand in awe and amazement, however, is the role of the extended family, the community of care and concern bustling around my friend.

Her aunties—mother and her four sisters, are doing her hair and makeup. They danced for her last night. Her mother fed her since she could not eat her dinner until her henna dried.

I tried to imagine what it would be like to grow up in such a culture, to have such a community of extended family.

I am truly happy for my friend.

But in that moment, I felt wistful and like an orphan. I am reminded of how alone truly am as far as family goes.

I don’t glamorize the situation—I know, I lived in a country for five years where the dedication to family came often at/over the individual’s expense. It is not without cost. You pay your dues. You make your sacrifices.

I recall this in memory, reflecting on when I fell deeply in love with an Indian man who assured me from the beginning he would not, could not, ever truly commit to me because he grew up in such a culture, an even more conservative Hindu Brahmin (the highest caste) kind of family, where you simply must one marry one from your own clan, religion, caste, language, and even one where your horoscopes/astrological reading must come out right for the union to be approved.

I thought about him as I looked around at all the hustle of people, trying to imagine all that he would have lost if he had chosen me.

I thought about myself and considered just how different I would be if I had grown up in such a family and culture.

I speculate and marvel because it is just so different that that is all that I can do.

I simply cannot even conceive of it.

My identity and life journey has been one in which I [always] knew I had to leave my hometown, for both educational and economic opportunity, but I also needed to do so for my own mental sanity.

But what if I hadn’t? What if I had grown up amongst aunties and cousins and loving brothers who hosted the party, along with a doting mother and father hoping to find my right match? (This makes me scoff a bit as even theirs was not a good match—how could they hope to find one for me?) What if I had people who always consistently had my back rather than trouble me and emotionally disturb me? What if I felt rooted in a field amongst other sunflowers, brightly colored and upright, rooted tall and firmly rooted, rather than as a solitary tree, study but alone in moistened earth, reaching my roots out further and further—searching for my connections to others.

But if I had come from a clan—

Would I have chosen to stay in my own hometown? If firmly Rooted? Securely Grounded? If that had been my life—If I had grown up in an Indian culture like this Telugu one? Would I have stayed true to my tradition and roots?

I think I would have. But it’s hard to say.

So much of my identity is exploring others cultures and loving to learn more about different peoples’ traditions and values—

But I also think that this is because I found my own so lacking.

Growing up, I longed for genealogy and ancestry information and stories from many generations past, for a rich culture heritage. I never felt that I had one.

In hindsight, I’m sure this is why it was so difficult for me to leave Indonesia where—after five years—I finally felt that I had my people, my community, my adopted culture.

So I take it all in, stare in amazement at aunties bustling about and uncles and cousins laughing and joking, in merriment and in time together—

And I just marvel. I try, but I simply cannot comprehending having a family like this.

I cannot conceive of who I would be if I did have one.