Facilities and Weddings

Jacob had a bit of an adventure before the wedding. We decided that it would be nice if he and his father got haircuts before the wedding. They went to a barbershop and Jacob had to go to the washroom. India does NOT have public toilets (or even private ones for that matter) readily availablein a lot of places. When he asked for the toilet, a person from the barbershop was assigned to escort him. He was taken to the schoolyard next door and told to pee against the wall. He was obviously shy so the guy reached up and closed the shutters on the classroom that had a class in session at the time. Needless to say, even with the shutters closed, he could not bring himself to use the "facilities".

Actually on the way to Chilika Lake the other day, Alan said he noticed a billboard advertising the village we were going through as winning an award for being an "open defacation free village". Most, it seems, are not. When we went to Puri last week, we stayed at a hotel with a fabulous view of the ocean. I was watching the birds on the sand and noticed a lot of people just squatting there. I wondered what they were doing fishing maybe? Searching for crabs? I trained the binoculars and quickly looked away again. It was a line of people using the open air facilities. I was horrified to remember that the kids had been playing on the beach at sunset the night before......

On a more pleasant note.... We went to the wedding yesterday. It was an all day affair that started in the afternoon and continued well into the night. The bride comes to the wedding facility with her ontourage first and sets herself up in a room of to the side of the main hall. In the open room, a priest has set up an altar which he goes through some rituals to set up before the wedding. The groom arrives after being paraded through town accompanied by a band. The band was in three open cars pulled together like a little train. You could hear them coming for blocks. The groom's friends and family follow on foot with the groom riding in a car decorated with lots of flowers bringing up the rear of the procession. The groom is greeted by the priest who gives him the first of seven different hats he will wear over the course of the wedding ceremony. A member of the bride's family then carries him from the car to the altar. Luckily Suja has a nephew who is about 22 with a good strong back and the groom was not heavy. The wedding ceremony takes place over the next several hours. At any point in time there are 100-300 people in the room where the ceremony takes place, but not many of them seem to be paying much attention to it.

The whole time the ceremony is taking place, there is a eating hall set up just off the main hall. It has tables to seat about 40 guests at a time. As you enter, there is a hand washing station. You sit down and they roll out paper to cover the table in front of you. One guy comes along and gives you a banana leaf plate (the Indian answer to the paper plate-- a good one, I think). He is followed by several other people who carry buckets of food and hand out rice, dal, 3 different curries and pieces of fish. At the end of the meal, they roll up the whole thing and start again. The eating hall runs constantly for hours to feed about 1800 people.

In Orissa, this state of India, there are NO implements of any kind. This was my second meal that I ate with my hands only. The first was a few days ago at the temple run by my brother in law Suja's family. I was half way through that meal before Charles Massey told me the trick-- you put your thumb behind the food you are holding in your scooped fingers and use it to kind of shovel the food into your mouth. I felt a lot better about eating yesterday with the other guests staring having already had a dry run at the temple in front of friends and family. I was quite proud of the kids who, after the initial shock of being told there weren't even any implements probably in the building, tucked in and ate.

The groom seemed nice, if a bit shy, so I think it will all work out. My sister Nicky and I wore a saris to the reception. Heather, Jacob Jay and Sam all had cute Indian suits to wear. I didn't have a mirror so I have no idea how it looked. Nicky weighs half of what I do, and she looked great, as did all the kids.