Wedding Bells

It is not wedding season in Kerala. With the incessant rain and the mud that it creates, it just isn’t an ideal time for a young woman to don an expensive white sari. But regardless of this, we heard wedding bells in Aluva today.

I have to admit that I don’t particularly enjoy attending weddings here. The ceremonies have a tendency to be long, and the achens perform them in that silly language that I still have not been able to get a clue about. And besides, the bride and groom are rarely people I know. I have gone to most of the weddings I’ve attended as the “token white girl,” a role I play proudly in public but roll my eyes at when I can finally go home and take off that blasted sari that everyone expects me to wear to this special occasion.

But today I did not mind going at all. I had been invited to this wedding, not to bestow the honor of my American presence on a new couple whom I do not know, but because I actually do have a relationship with the family of the groom. The groom’s father is the manager of UCC and the man whose office I have been sitting in since last September. I know him quite well now, and he invited me to his son’s wedding not as the white girl who can make the occasion that much more special, but as Charlotte, his colleague and friend.

The ceremony was long, and the nine achens performing it did not use one word that I could understand. But a choir broke up the monotony of the chanting, which helped keep my attention. The bride, too, was able to keep my attention. Dressed perfectly in a gorgeous white sari embroidered with pink and gold, she was the most beautiful Indian bride I’ve seen yet. And what I loved most about her was the way she smiled (not all of them do, you see).

So I made it through the ceremony and walked the short distance to the reception hall, where I found a few friends with whom to share the meal. I always expect a good meal when I attend weddings (it’s the least I deserve if I have to wear that stupid sari), and today I was not disappointed. I ate my fill, and then, because the reception ends for each person when he or she has finished eating, I bid my friends farewell and went home to rest – just in time for the rain to start falling. I just hope the white sari with the pink and gold embroidery stayed out of the mud.