Welcomed Wedding Crashers

In planning my trip to India, I knew I had to stay through February to attend the wedding that Margaret and I were invited to by a friend from Xavier, Ashwin. On February 8, we headed to Vidjayawada, Andhra Pradesh, to meet up with Ashwin a few days before the wedding of his friend Ratna (who actually studied at the University of Indianapolis) to Alekhya. His family hosted us in their guest apartment (there were three bedrooms, but Ashwin found it funny that we each took our own room), fed us incredible homemade south Indian food, treated us to some ice cream at Baskin Robbins, and welcomed us into their lives. The first night we arrived, after eating dinner, we were whisked away to dance practice. Ashwin was supposed to be in the Sangeet, or pre-wedding dance party/performance, and Margaret and I were to accompany him to practice. Somehow, they managed to rope us into performing in the Sangeet as well. Never fear, the Sangeet was still four days away; we had plenty of time to practice (luckily we had only four moves). That night, we went with some of Ashwin’s friends to a Tollywood movie called Mirchi. (Yes, there is a film industry in India separate from Bollywood; Tollywood movies are all in Telugu, the state language of Andhra Pradesh.)

Indian weddings are extensive events, and they certainly don’t always happen on weekends like in the U.S. Ratna and Alekhya’s actual wedding ceremony was scheduled for February 14, along with about 300,000 weddings in Andhra Pradesh alone. No, it had nothing to do with Valentine’s Day; the marriage ceremony time is usually determined by horoscope, and something about the alignment of the planets made February 14 one of the most auspicious days for a wedding. Though we arrived February 8, we had only a few days before the wedding festivities began: first the cocktail hour, then the Sangeet the following day, then the wedding itself two days later, and finally the reception. The wedding itself along with the Sangeet and cocktail hour are events put on by the bride’s family in her hometown; the groom’s family hosts the reception in his hometown, so we would be heading to Hyderabad for the wedding.

But before we got to the wedding events, we got a chance to visit a nearby village. Ashwin’s friend Deepak was taking his wife Usha and their daughter back to visit with her family and attend a family wedding (while he attended Ratna’s Sangeet with us and then left for another city to go to a different wedding), so we tagged along, met Usha’s family, saw her uncle’s banana plantation, and took a boat ride on the Krishna River. I learned a lot about bananas: the trees take about 11 months to grow and yield only one crop, and they frequently use crop rotation with turmeric. The biggest challenge was the language: Telugu. Even Margaret couldn’t understand because most people do not speak Hindi. Although most of Ashwin’s friends speak English (many even studied in the U.S.), most of Usha’s family does not. Still, they welcomed us with open arms, fed us frequently, showed us around, and took us on a boat ride. These experiences are definitely much better than the typical tourist experiences that we’ve largely been having since.

Because there were so many weddings on February 14, Ashwin had to pick and choose events of the weddings, so we, along with several other of Ashwin’s friends, stayed in Vidjayawada for the cocktail hour of a wedding we were not attending. On the morning of February 12, Ashwin’s friend Sanketh picked us up, along with two other friends, to drive up to Hyderabad, an approximately 4-hour drive. We arrived, met up with Deepak, picked up Ashwin’s fiancé Deepika, and headed over to another Sangeet practice. Here, we met the bride, Alekhya, who also welcomed us to her home and her wedding. We sat with Deepika and got to know her, practiced our dance moves, and then went to Ashwin’s place in Hyderabad to rest and get ready for the Sangeet. The dance performances were awesome, and the location was outstanding – outside, next to a lake, with a large tree as a centerpiece. Okay, the dance performances were mostly awesome: Margaret and I missed the cue for our dance, largely because there were people blocking the stairs up to the stage, so we raced on with no time to think about our moves. I actually have no idea how we did other than coming on late, but we survived. After the performance, we had an incredible dinner and then started in on the dance party. By the end of the night, we were exhausted. We had danced, met many new people, and had a wonderful time. While Ashwin went out with some other friends, his friend Aditya took Margaret and I back to get some sleep.

The next day was Ash Wednesday, so Margaret and I hit a few of the sights in Hyderabad and then went to church. There are many more Catholic churches in the South than in some of the other areas we’ve been due to its longer history of missionaries and colonialism. After dinner with Aditya, Deepika and her friend Ayushi, and Ashwin, we went to ABCD: Any Body Can Dance, the first 3D Hindi dance movie. As usual (and because it started at 10:30), I fell asleep. But the parts I saw reminded me of Glee, and everyone else said it was a terrible movie.

Finally, the day of the wedding arrived. While Margaret stayed in to get some work done, I went with Ashwin and Deepika to the lunch hosted by the groom’s family for their guests, then to the mall and a bar to hang out with some of Ashwin’s friends. Ashwin then sent Margaret and me off with his driver to see a few more of the Hyderabad sights. Traffic was terrible, and it took us forever to get to the fort, which Ashwin said was a must-see – even more important than the wedding. By the time we got back, tied our own saris (it takes some practice to be able to wear 5 meters of fabric as a dress), and made it to the wedding, many of the guests were leaving; we had missed the marriage part of the ceremony. There was still, however, plenty going on. Ratna and Alekhya were on the stage with the priests performing the ceremony and several of the guests, so Ashwin took us up to watch. I couldn’t be too disappointed at missing most of the ceremony after Ashwin’s friend Varun commented that even most Indians have never seen a full Indian wedding ceremony. I just got the native experience.

 

The next day, we returned to Vidjayawada for the reception. We went to lunch at Ratna’s house with a plan to attend the formal reception that evening, when we heard that Ashwin had successfully secured our tickets to Hampi for a train that left that night. So we gathered our stuff, had dinner, said farewell to Ashwin’s family, and went to the train station, where Sanketh met us to say goodbye, and we boarded the train. Remember how there were 300,000 weddings in Andhra Pradesh on February 14? Well, as the receptions were all in the home cities of the grooms, Ashwin had about four receptions to go to that night. And we were off for our next adventures.