Indian weddings
Ludhiana is India's capital of industry and boredom I'm here
for a friend's wedding. She has spent the whole day having her hands and feet
painted with henna ink as traditional decoration for the ceremony. There's to
be no white worn—or white-coloured gifts given—at the wedding. In India, white
is the colour of death as opposed to the colour of virgins. It's naturally
assumed that the girl will be a virgin at marriage anyway.
Today is the engagement. I'm having a suit tailor-made for
the occasion—all for the handsome sum of 65 pounds. But for the wedding I'll be
wearing traditional Indian dress... male dress: a sherwani. I'm not sure how to
pronounce it properly so I say Sharmani and everyone seems to know what I'm
talking about—basically Armani with a 'Sh'.
The wedding will only be family and close friends, so only a
small gathering of 900 people is expected. This is relatively small compared to
weddings of 2,000+ guests. The bitch is that all the wedding invitations have
to be handed out personally by the parents. Each wedding invite is a box of
candy and a fancy card, which costs 3 pounds. The total projected cost of the wedding
is in the neighbourhood of 18,000 pounds—and that's without the dowry, for
which the bride's father is solely responsible. The dowry usually covers
everything the couple needs to get their home up and running: furniture,
electricals, clothing, white goods (preferably in another colour) and so on. It
actually does sound more appealing to have a funeral.
