Now that the Camel Fair is over, wedding parties are prowling the winding streets of Pushkar. I was here at nearly the same time eleven years ago and watching the processions was one of the highlights of my trip. Thankfully, things haven’t changed much.
A band marches at the front of the meandering group with speakers and batteries mounted on a large push cart. The keyboardist walks behind it, his fingers flying over the keys manically as he cranks out a crazy kind of high-speed carnival music. It sounds as if he’s playing while running down a steep hill, rattling off a complicated riff or trill each time he stumbles over a stump or bounces off a tree. The song seems to have gotten away from him but he’s right on its tail.
Behind him are the rest of the band, men young and old, stuffed into ill-fitting matching jackets and usually slumping along like whipped dogs.
The drummer keeps a steady marching beat, with a couple of tambourines and cymbals for support. Two men with what I think are baritones provide a bit of polka oompa backbone, the clarinet player is going crazy and the trumpet player steps in at the oddest times with an off-tempo “blat blat blat”. I don’t think any of them are playing the same song — they’re not even on the same beat. It’s a wonderful cacophony that wrings smiles from everyone it passes.
The main wedding party follows behind and this time it consists of a dozen women dressed in saris, walking slowly and talking amongst themselves. Sometimes they’re carrying pots full of offerings, or stopping to dance at the doorway to a home. At night, elaborately-dressed grooms in turbans ride a decorated horse along the same route, surrounded by dozens of men. I haven’t yet figured out how it all works but I’m enthralled.
I’ve been told a wedding is a five- or even seven-day event and these processions seem to take place over several days. At some point, the groom travels to the bride’s house with gifts. Another day the bride visits the groom’s parents. It’s too complicated and involved for me to fully grok but I really don’t care — I’m enchanted by the sounds and the colors and the happy smiles.
At night, a rolling gas generator is added to the mix and young boys walk along the edge of the group, carrying colored lights connected by extension cords. When I was here in 1999, the lights were whimsical Dr. Seuss candelabras with 6-8 light bulbs hanging from bent steel tubes. Now the lights are a single florescent tube, like an electric camping lantern, with plastic draped over them to protect them from the night’s intermittent rain. On any given evening, there may be two or three parades wandering around town. It’s a wonderful spectacle.
The guys who work the rooftop kitchen at the Everest Hotel –which is too small to be listed on Expedia– have taken a liking to me and have named me “Uncle” — I’m now family, they’ve explained.
I ask one of the cooks, Rakesh, about the wedding parties and he replies that this is a lucky month to get married and the town will be busy until the 14th of December. His older brother was married just six months ago and Rakesh had to take three weeks off from work to prepare.
He cleaned and repainted the house, per tradition, then built shelters along the back of the house so that visiting family would have a place to sleep. Renting extra furniture and beds, then hiring caterers, planning the menu and arranging transport from the bus and train stations kept him busy twelve hours a day. When the wedding was over, he says, he slept for three days.
“When you get married, will your brother do the same for you?”
“Oh yes! We have an agreement — I asked before I said I would help. My parents are looking for a wife for me now. They have someone in mind but I don’t like her.”
He pauses for a moment, then suggests “I have wedding photos if you’d like to see?”
Now, here’s a difference between being home and traveling in a foreign land: had someone asked me this in Austin, I’d have probably faked a seizure on the spot, preferring a wallet in my mouth and an ambulance ride to having to sift through a thousand photos of someone’s special day. But here and now, the answer is “Hell yeah, I’d love to”.
He produces a massive photo album, four inches thick with six photos to a page — why he stores a copy of his brother’s wedding album at work I don’t understand but I’m not going to ask.
The first thing that strikes me is how much Photoshop work is involved — every third or fourth page is a full 8×10 portrait of the couple with jewelry and gold framing the print, or an image of Ganesh floating nearby.
Jewelry is a huge part of the culture here in Rajasthan — there aren’t many safe places to store money in a small village, so any extra cash is often put into buying gold bracelets and necklaces for the wife. It boosts social standing while functioning as a bank of sorts — beats hiding it under the mattress.
The photos themselves feature various family members standing stiffly and staring at the camera. There isn’t a single photo of his brother or sister-in-law smiling. “They’re never smiling. Aren’t they in love?”
“Oh yes, they are. This is their ‘photo face’”.
Rakesh points out his father, a stern-looking character with a mustache that wouldn’t look out of place at a Pride parade. Rakesh has the one older brother and three sisters and a mother in her fifties — it’s a good-looking family. He tries to explain what’s happening at various stages (spread over seven days) but the language –and culture– gap is too much. It’s confusing and convoluted. Or maybe I’m just not sharp enough to keep up.
One photo features four women in red saris smiling at the camera. “Wow, who’s she?” I ask, pointing. “She’s hot!”
He colors quickly and frowns. “My parents want me to marry her. She’s the one I don’t like.”
“But, dude… she’s hot.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
I let it go. Now that I think about it, there is something vaguely worrying about her smile. Is that a sneer? I hadn’t noticed before, but now…
The next 8×10 features his sister-in-law holding her hand out, palm up. Someone has Photoshopped in a small glowing photo of his brother’s head, floating just above her palm. He laughs.
“I like that one! She has him in the palm of her hand…”
“You know, Rakesh, some things are the same no matter where you go.”
