Since pictures will not upload please check my Facebook! I have the mobile uploads set to public so that you can all see the pictures!! They are very cool!
**a lot of information so I apologize for the length.
Let me start by saying how lucky and blessed I am. I have been getting the experience f a lifetime. The family I have been placed with is amazing and has given me opportunities to experience the culture in everyday possible.
Saturday we went to a Nepali marriage ceremony! We started off by meeting everyone at the turn off to Sarsngkot in Pokhara. We were supposed to meet the bus at 10 but typical Nepali time kept us standing there until 11 thinking we missed it. We found another guy going some stopped and had tea until the bus arrived.
If there is one moment I wish had on video it was the one was the bus finally arrived. It was so lacked coming down the hill that it was exploding with people. I mean people were hanging out of the windows, riding the roof, and grasping on to anything outside of the bus just to hang on. The exact second it stopped mass chaos broke out. Everyone became to tumble out of the bus and make a mad dash towards the empty buses that met there. I had no idea what direction to turn. In one side Jeevan was calling me while Aatma is telling me the p other way. While I am trying to decide there are Nepali people running everywhere. Insane!
I ended up on the bus with Aatma cramped in the back corner on a spare tire with one arm halfway out the window. It turns out I ended up on the music bus so directly in front of me sat four men with strange instruments. Every time we would pas through a town they would start l,saying traditional Nepali wedding music. At first it sounded like a mix of a dying cat and nails on a chalkboard, however after a few times it really grew in me. For the following hour and a half I sat in a bus full of men, hanging out a window, watching the landscape pass by, and enjoying the music.
We arrived to the town if the bride. It is tradition that during a marriage the men and single women go to the brides house and take her away. It was a small village high in the mountains. Four bus loads of people totaling over 400 people (once the villagers joined) hiked up the hill to the beat of the music.
Arriving at the brides house was overwhelming. I now know what the order of events are but at the time we were still trying to figure out the details through Aatmas confusing English. The wedding is set up into 3 sections, the dining tent, marriage site, and dance area. At any given time you can go to any area.
First we went to the dining tent. We were ushered to the front of a huge line since we were foreigners (I wish they would stop being so nice) and received a p,ate of Dal Bhat. Here we learned that the family was very wealthy and in the Chetri cast (second highest). Since they had money they were expected to provide food for the entire village.
A short walk up from there we went to look at the marriage site where they had built a small shrine for the ceremony. The shrine consisted of a hodge podge of random things such as corn, bread, fruit, money, and many more things that were all being offered to please the gods. In the center of this stuff is a small fire that sends smoke. The outside is built from bamboo, corn stalks, and other grasses. The whole thing was bright and colorful.
We met the priest (not sure what to call him) and he kindly greeted us with a namaste and a smile that revealed a missing tooth smile. You could immediately tell he had a wonderful personality! He quickly became my favorite person there.
Next we visited the dance tent where Amish took his turn dancing to the strange music I mentioned earlier. During this stage of the wedding the only music allowed is that if the band, no singing, because it is a more solemn time because the bride will be leaving the town. The men sat under the roof playing the music dressed in suites and Nepali hats and some in traditional robes. The women lined the stone wall on the other side laughing and smiling at us. The one came over and insisted we danced.
The girls dance by spinning I circles and moving their arms. It looks pretty cool. The boys out their arms out to the side and look like they are soaring though the air then begin to jump in the floor in a similar Russian type dance.
We came back up to the shrine to witness the next step in the wedding. The whole thing took awhile and I am still unsure of a lot of it but I do know this.
The bride and groom sat in chairs while relatives came and kissed the feet of the couple. Bizarre. They had water tanks and pitchers that they poured over their feet. Finally they would end by putting the red tikka on their forehead.
The bride and groom did some prayers and then the bride went to change. She was no longer part of her family so she was to out in a uniform that belonged to the man. It seems quite possessive and shows the place of the women. Keep in mind that during all of these proceedings that no one is quite, people are walking around, and shouting across the the place. Complete opposite of the weddings we are used to.
Everyone waiting for her to come back out. The image of what happened next will be one that will stay with me forever. The bride emerged in a beautiful sari. It was red and green and covered withe sequence. She was so upset that you could hear her wail over the crowd and she was being drug over to the shrine by her brother. She reminded me of a mother her had just lost a child. It was so sad but most of the crowd just laughed. What the heck?!
We learned later that this was an arranged marriage. The families met and discussed the arrangement and allowed the boy and girl to talk for an hour to see if they agreed. Although she did agree to it most women cry at the wedding because they are departing their family. Women do not have the chance to own property only the men in the family do. Whenever a couple gets married the men to t take the wife from the family to the new home, which in this case is a pretty good distance away. Her sister tried to comfort her but it did not work well. For the remainder of the ceremony she had tears in her eyes and never once looked up from the ground, yet this was normal I suppose. ** I found out just now that they do this on purpose. The bride is pure and they cover most of her face and look down so it is hard to see it. She does not want everyone to have a perfect view of her face so she keeps hidden because she is the most important thing at the wedding. My feelings towards the wedding and how they treat the woman is changing.
Somehow I got a front row seat to this shindig so I had amazing pictures but I felt awkward the entire time. How did I get so lucky to end up experiencing something like this?
They laid out a cloth I front of her head and the groom spread a yellow line three times up the cloth. After she bowed to his feet. Next they took a white cloth tied in a knot and dropped it on their shoulders. The pair walked around the shrine and took a seat again. This symbol of the yellow tikka on the cloth up to her forehead is the most important moment of the wedding. It signifies their official marriage and is similar in importance as "you may now kiss the bride" in Christian weddings.
Another bizarre thing was after the cloth and bowing the made bent over and lifted the women by her under arms. She was ski,led like a sack of potatoes and his dragged her from one spot to a few feet to the right. Once again this scene shocked me and made me feel like the women had no respect. Come in first she kissed his feet and now she gets dragged to a new spot. Luckily today Santosh explained that the groom was moving the bride into his spot. They are no longer separate but one. She now shares his life and everything in it.
It is amazing how when you don't understand the meaning behind the rituals it can be interpreted so differently.
Some side notes:
The groom wore sunglasses
The bride refused to drink any water
The priest checked his phone at one point
People shouted out whatever they wanted
Aatma took us In a side room and served us some Nepali wedding food that consisted of weird circle bread, sugared rice baks, bananas, and apple slices.
When we returned outside the bride and groom were gone. We were told to go to a table and receive tikka from the family. I felt so weird because only the relatives are supposed to receive this. Against my will Aatma ushered me I to the seat and I was blessed by a man. Another handed me an offering gift of 30 rupees.
After everything settled down the procession began back down the hill. The brother f the bride carried her over his shoulders and circled the local temple. The priest announced her departure from the family she grew up with and her entrance to her new life. This made her sob all over again.
At the bottom of the hill the buses began to pack up with people while the band played loudly outside. The bride and groom got in their car that was decorated with colorful metallic strings. Aatma had the guts to take my camera and get right up in the brides face and video!!!!! What was he thinking, these people have no personal space.
The ride home was even more crazy than the one there. This time we were stuffed even more like sardines. Many people took to the roof to fit. It was a bumpy and dangerous road back to Sarangkot and I am so surprised no I e fell off. The people on top would cheer every time they narrowly missed a tree branch or telephone wire.
Back in Sarangkot we found out the married woman had been gathered singing and dancing and eating all day long. The town was excited to see the new bride.
We met Mina, Akas, aAllie, and Santosh and went to the party fully dressed in traditional clothes. Mina had helped me tie my Sari because I could not figure it out at all! Aatma commented that with my height, body build, and personality I could fit in with the Nepali people. The party had two levels. The bottom level had the guys dancing and the top level had ,mainly women. The woman had a drum and sang all of the songs. It was beautiful! Of course I got pulled up to dance for a bit.
It is also tradition that when the bride and groom arrive in the grooms home they sit in a room alone. One by one the town people pay money to see the brides face and bless them with tikka. It's cool because when I started thinking about it no one in the town had ever seen this bride before. She grew up in a village further away so this was her first visit. Everyone wants to see the bride!!!
Everyone was pretty tired so they made their journey back to our house exact for Mina, Aatma, Akas and I. We watched some more dancing and a dance off between the bride and groom's mothers. The groom's mother won hands down. She was a great dancer with a bigger personality! Without warning I was being pulled I to the circled to dance with her.
The following ten minutes was one if the best moments in my life. I know I say that often but this truly was one of those moments. The women began singing songs and I faced the mother of the groom and copied her dance moves. It did not seem real looking back on it, it seemed to be more of something from a movie. All around me beautiful young and old Neplai women were chanting and laughing loudly as I danced silly moves with this lady. Halfway through she stopped me and presented me with a beautiful necklace made of many stranded of red beads with a giant gold pendant.
The women all cheered and started the singing again. This time the women danced faster and started getting lower and kicking her legs up higher, I followed the best I could. Cheers and laughter erupted everywhere (I'm still not sure if it was how I looked or just the fact I was a foreigner dancing) and we continued this charade for another five minutes! When we finished I was out of breath and tired. The women gave me a giant smile and out her arm around me and rubbed my shoulders and said "you belong here!"
How beautiful! How had I managed to find myself not only attending a crazy wedding in Nepal but at the center of a wedding party with the other of the groom. A day later looking back I still can't believe it. It is surreal yet such a vivid picture in my head. This is their culture and I am living right in it. Currently I am no longer a tourist doing the typical but a random foreigner living I their lives and seeing what it's truly like. I would not trade those ten minutes for even a million dollars.
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