Band on bicycles

I have to add a little more about the band in the groom's procession mentioned in the last post. The band wasn't actually in cars but in a parade of bicycle rickshaws (of the flatbed, load-carrying type rather than the people-carrying type.) All but the first of the rickshaws had canopies of fancy appliqué-work built up on them. The first, undecorated, rickshaw carried a big monster of a generator. The second had a mixing board, the sound man and a couple of speakers. The third rickshaw carried the percussion session and some more speakers, while the fourth, and last, carried the guitarist, a cool-looking dude with little spectacles, and the singer. The whole parade of cycle rickshaws was strung together with a bundle of power and audio cables.

There was actually a second band inside the marriage venue. When we first arrived, to find no guests and people still setting the place up (the sound system and lights were arriving on yet another of the useful cycle rickshaws) there were four guys fast asleep, wrapped in blankets, in an alcove by the main entrance. Later, after the guests arrived and things got going, music started up and it turned out that the four sleepers were in fact the house band. Perhaps they'd been sleeping off the previous wedding. This was a more traditional ensemble, with three types of drum and a short, reed horn with a flared bell. Later still, the groom's band reappeared on a stage outside the hall.

At some point, when I get a chance to download and organize some photos, I'll post some pictures of cycle rickshaws and other forms of cycle transport, either here or at the bicycle-oriented (but currently moribund) Rhinos and Lilos I seem to have taken more pictures of various aspects of Indian road traffic (bicycles, motorcycles, trucks, ox-carts) than of anything else.