A Marwadi Wedding

I have attended Punjabi weddings (well of course), Marathi wedding, Muslim wedding, Gujarati wedding and now finally i went to one of my very close friends' wedding in Rajasthan - a Marwadi wedding. And i must say it was quite an experience.

To start with - sweets. My goodness, i am very sure that even if there is an acute shortage of water or if there is a famine or even if they are starving or anything such severe happens in Rajasthan, they won’t stop eating sweets. And to eat on one's own is a different issue, but to make others eat forcefully is what was different here. We normally feed others' sweets in humor and mostly only to the close relatives only. But in Rajasthan, we were treated with sweets almost by everyone and multiple times and all these with extremely serious faces and after being told that it was a part of their tradition. It seemed like if we don't eat, we will be beaten. And so even when our bellies were pleading us to stop dumping more sweets into them, we couldn't. We urged and fought and made so many excuses, but they were just not ceasing in their mission and in fact that was motivating them even more to make us suffer. A human tendency - make the sufferers under your authority suffer even more.

The dining place during marriage had more sweet counters than any other ones. The most surprising and inexplicable thing that seemed to me was that people over there used to consider sweet dishes as the main course and then went on to eat chappatis, rice and vegetables and yes believe me, they ended it all with snacks like chat or something else.

Then there are these infinite number of customs, procedures, traditions and superstitions which i believe is what makes Indian culture so unique. There are innumerous little things that the bride and the groom are supposed to do and an equal number of things that they are forbidden to.

One very strange custom was that the grooms' parents cannot be present at the time when the couple are exchanging vows. Why would a custom prevent a couple from attending the wedding of their beloved son? May be there is some reason for that, but i totally don’t understand it. Another intriguing one was that the bride goes back to her home after marriage and next day she does to and fro from the grooms' place at least 4-5 times. And they finally are united in the bond of love (hope you understand how) on the second night. The next day is also kept for the little games aimed at helping the bride to get familiar with the grooms' family and most importantly being a buddy to her life partner.

Overall a great experience. I got to see a totally new kind of wedding, new set of customs, traditions and a new place as well. And to think that India has so many different castes and cultures, which have their own kinds of weddings and traditions and still there are some similarities between all is absolutely amazing. Hope i get to see many more different kinds and hope they are as mysterious as the Big Fat Marwadi wedding.