I wanted to write this soon after I returned from India in January, but like too many things in my life, I pushed it aside for a while. No longer, say I. It is coming. Now. This is a review of what a wedding in India actually is, how great it can be, and a city that has an arcane "Everything closes by 11:30" rule, which is about is ridiculous as prohibition in the 1920's. Anyway, let's go. It is a piece just about the general goings on of a wedding in India in my family. The bride is my cousin, we'll call her Vinitha. She's marrying a man (had to clarify; you can never be too safe), who we'll call Tri-Name. Actually, we'll call him by his nickname Chinny, mainly because I don't know his actual name, as it has been told to me as Rohit or Joseph. Anyway, it takes place in Bangalore, a town that is no longer a town, overrun by globalization, and not exactly in a good way. It takes place between the days of December 24th and January 2nd. It's a good one (for me at least).

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A Wedding in India

Family, Fun and a City That Does Sleep

(Part 1 of 4)

India is a different place, a different world. Never more striking when you go there and leave the dead of winter behind. The second you land in India, and leave the cozy confines of the plane, you know immediately that you are in India. There is no combination of smell (not necessarily a bad smell, just a distinctive one) and heat quite like India, a personal welcome greeting that I can't stand, but can't stand to live without (otherwise, how would I know I'm there?). That slap in the face, or more pointedly, in the nose and sweat-glands, at least wakes you up, which is necessary when almost any international flight arrives and leaves India around 2am (India may sleep early, but their airports definitely don't). That smell of heat (yes, it smells) pervades throughout the airport complex in Bombay, so I was dreading my five hour layover, but the second I reached the newly completed Domestic Airport in Bombay, I realized this would be a different experience. It was clean, with high glass windows. It looked like any airport anywhere else in the world (believe me, if you had been to the old Bombay airport, which resembled a Econo Lodge, you would know what this would mean); and that was the second that I realized that this was no ordinary trip to India. No, this was something special. It started out with a surprise, and finished with a week a only partially remember.

When it was over, and my family and me were leaving for Mangalore, my parents childhood home, my grandmother's home that I spent countless summers as a child, I was already set to go back and do it all over again. I wanted every cousin I know to start getting married in India. I don't even care who it was to, or if they would make a happy couple (well, that's not exactly true - I would care after the wedding was over), I just wanted more. The experience was that great, that entertaining, that endless, that its inevitable end didn't even bring on sadness when it was over (yes, I'm the person that normally feels sad when things come to a close and can't just remember the good memories). It just brought on a longing to do it again, and it was horrible. But now, a month and a half later, it is a memory that will be unbreakable and perfect, a memory of a week gone by, a week that was worth living to its fullest, and Lord knows we did just that.

(before I continue, I need to interject that I had to edit what followed about 100 times in fear of it bringing about litigation and what impact the following would have for my image..... but remember India's not exactly a country where the fake ID business is booming, if you know what I mean)

After the long flight, long wait in Bombay, long drive from Bangalore's slightly overrated new airport, and long nap, I was ready to go to Midnight Mass (I arrived on Christmas Eve), meet my cousins who had already arrived in the preceding days, and get a good start in Bangalore. Little did I know that midnight mass was actually more like a pregame. It was one since that was actually far from the end of the night for the family, but also because the outdoor venue for midnight mass was a meeting space for the local mass. Throngs of random people, who could not have looked less Christian even if they were wearing a turbin or reciting Koran verses, descended upon the church that within four days would host a wedding, the wedding. They were drinking in the church courtyard, conversing with each other, basically planning the rest of the night. Although this drew the unending ire of my Aunt Carmel, who's about as religious as they come, I thought it was great. It was like going to mass in a stadium. All I was missing was the beer and hot dog, and of course, the game. It was so perfectly Indian, in its genuine state. No other country in the world would a mass of people just go to a church on Christmas Eve to hang out. In no other country would I be surprised that all of the non-Christians listened to the priests cries of "don't receive communion if you are not a Catholic" (easily a big upset - considering this is the same country that will have every one rush to the line to board the plane when they announce they are boarding rows 30-40). This is the India I suspected, and in all seriousness, missed. What came next wasn't.

Night One...... And it was a good start.

We next retired to my Aunt Carmel's house. Luckily, retiring meant just going to an after Christmas Mass party, and there are few better reasons to celebrate. I finally got to see the bride to be (another cousin), her fiancee (who didn't remember me, but then again I had only met him for about ten minutes a year and a half earlier), my cousin Andy, the bride-to-be's sister Smitha, their older brother and many more people that I won't name right now because I'm sure my incessant naming of random people is losing readers with each successive word. Mainly, I got to meet Vinitha's friends, a cast of characters that would do well in a sitcom, but in this case, the city of Bangalore was just fine. They were all foreign to me on day one, a swath of talls and shorts, thins and not-so-thins, and varying shades of authentic Brown. Within a week, I would know most of them by name, by occupation and by favorite drink. That's what happens when there's an occasion each night to attend to. That's what happens when you see the same people night after night; especially when you want to see those people night after night. If the company you keep is a measure of success, then Vinitha, you are a hall-of-famer. Around three, or four, or five, or basically the expiration of my ability to put off being susceptible to jetlag, I finally did "retire" to the upstairs of my Aunt's house, a place that I really had not been to in eleven fourteen years.

One of the best unintended results of this trip to India was the way it changed my Aunt's house in my life. For my first four trips to India, my Aunt's house, a block away from the noted, turning-too-uppity Bangalore Club, was my home in India, a place where I could be comforted by my Aunt, my Uncle and her kids. It was of intrigue, fun and more good memories that I regret having to forget as age hit. The past three trips to India, it wasn't my home, it wasn't a home. After my cousins from that house mostly moved out, got married (didn't get to go to those weddings, which is really what made this one so special) and had kids of their own, it became a slightly lonely place. I still went there, because I love my Aunt and Uncle, but it wasn't a place I could ever imagine staying or spending the night (sorry for this Auntie Carmel, but be sure this is no longer the case). Not anymore. It became a home for me again, and one that I embraced. It was fun to relive my childhood in that way, sleeping in her house, living in it, eating meals in it. The same places I crawled over, through and under when I was a toddler, I was now living in a decade and a half later, and it was great. Considering little else in the trip would resemble my times in India as a toddler (not that that was a problem), having this little trip back to the mid-90's was an unexpected, lovely surprise.

The next day was the official start of the wedding festivities in its most exact sense, with my cousin's roce (which will be explained in excruciating detail later) in my other cousins farm in the netherworlds of Bangalore, in the way that a netherworld would be a peaceful place that doesn't have 100,000 people milling around per square mile like Bangalore central. It was the first of a week that redefined just how much fun my mom's side of my family is, and just how great this age in all of our respective lives is. It was a perfect set-up, the perfect mix of ages. A perfect brew, that much like India's perfect brews. Both brews would proceed to be imbibed day after day after day (more exactly night after night after night).



Part 2 coming up later............ the roce and meaning of family (at least in a wedding situation), plus the evolution of Bangalore.