I have had a nice eventful time this week. Actually most weeks are eventful, but not always nice! I find myself again, nearly a week on, sitting in the very same chair in the computer room at the Asha center in Kalkaji. It is lunch time and Asha's lovely computer teacher, Gayatri, is looking over my shoulder trying to decipher what I am writing. Her English is very good, especially since it has been largely picked up from the various volunteers who have spent their time here, but this is a bit beyond her. Sadly I am not much help for her English learning because I try to speak Hindi whenever spoken to. Perhaps I am a bit stubborn!
She does understand the words "Wedding Madness", and I am not quite sure what she makes of that. She certainly knows what I referring to because she was among the many guests (myself included) to be invited to a wedding last Thursday: quite a bizarre event as I am sure you may have gathered about weddings in India!
The marriage was that of the sister of another Asha staff member, Charan, who works in Tigri and I have been wanting to write about it all week really. Actually, it is not so much the unintelligible chaos of the wedding itself that I felt was worth expounding upon, but the events that followed it, which for me were something of an education!
I must say, the wedding was certainly an exciting evening. I was among the first to arrive at the temple with Gopal (the Asha team leader at Tigri) and his family, who had offered to take me along with them. The evening gained momentum gradually as more and more people arrived and eventually developed into a frenzy as we ate food and I was introduced to more people than I could mention. Being the only white person invited, I received more attention than was entirely comfortable! A man whose name I never properly learned became my "very good friend" for the evening. He held my hand affectionately and lead me around, making sure I had a good view of the proceedings as the evening reached a climax with the groom's arrival in a horse drawn carriage. There were thundering bangra drums, dancing and fireworks amid the crush of hundreds of people (many of whom seemed to be tagging along, and enjoying the party - not really having any connection to the marrying couple!). The effect was euphoric!
To my surprise (and relief!) I was obliged to leave the proceedings early since Gopal's daughter was to be taking an exam the following morning and needed a good nights sleep. When I say early, we had in fact been at the wedding for no less than four hours by the time the groom arrived and I was told to expect it to go on into the small hours of the morning. It was about 10:30pm when we left. My aforementioned "very good friend" turned out to be Gopal's best friend since childhood, and he shared the auto with us on the way back to Gopal's home (that is 6 of us, Gopal's wife and two daughters included, hurtling along in a 3-wheeler designed to carry a max. of 3 passengers!).
Under the impression that it was going to be a very late night, I had accepted Gopal's offer of a bed for the night but, feeling rather tired of being an exhibition, and since we had left so much earlier than I had expected, the prospect of staying with them had rather soured as it approached. His home is decidedly off the tourist radar, so my presence there was causing a stir of curiosity among neighbors and unabashed pride on the part of Gopal and his family. I decided that it would be best to go home since, among other reasons, I was feeling distinctly uncomfortable. It really seemed to make sense to me at the time since it was relatively early in the evening, the journey home would be no problem and my decision to stay the night had been made last minute anyway, so I had come unprepared. No toothbrush, towel, and such things. I also had no plan for the English classes on the following day and I would only be able to print out worksheets from the office in the morning if I went home. All of this, at that time, conspired to convince me that it would be very sensible to leave, yet Gopal was surprisingly reluctant to see me go. His brow furrowed with concern and perhaps disappointment when I suggested it, and he said he would be very worried for my safety traveling home.
At length, he accepted my decision on the condition that he come with me and, as far as I understood him at that moment, secure me an auto for my homeward travel. Thus he, I and my "very good friend" from the wedding, who still hadn't left my company, set off down the dark alleyways towards the road. Having bartered an auto, he ushered me to sit down and then he and his friend also climbed in after me. To my horror, and too late for me to do much about it, I realized that they intended to come all the way to Vasant Kunj with me to make sure I reached home safely! This was crazy! For me it was just a 25 minute direct trip but the round trip would take them more than an hour - and for all their worry about whether I would get home safe, there was still the question of whether they would return home safe themselves!
I complained, mustering all the Hindi I could manage and tried to insist that I would stay with Gopal after all, yet having sat down in the auto, they were utterly insistent on escorting me home and would not move. To me it felt horrendous. I felt that anything would be better than the shame of putting them out so drastically and as we moved off, the shame of it weighed me down heavily.
We were silent for some time and then Gopal turned to me and smiled: "Michael, we singing Hindi song!" and with that he began to sing and we both joined in together, a song I had been taught at the Tigri center on a quiet afternoon in recent days. As we sung, the weight and shame seemed to melt away, and I think I realized then how they saw what was happening and that they simply loved me, in that simple, self sacrificial way that Indians seem to manage, and if I was too ashamed to accept it, it was actually my own problem. The auto-wallah (driver) was thrilled and wagged his head in appreciation as we wove our way through the empty night time streets: "tere jaisa yaar kahan, kahan aisa yaarana, yaad karegi dooniyar, tera mera afasana, ..." (roughly translated: "where is a friend like you? Where is friendship like this? the whole world will remember our story, ...")
I read the best seller 'Shantaram' recently, an autobiography of an Australian criminal who escaped from jail and ended up living in a slum in Bombay (gripping book..!). It says in that book somewhere that you have to surrender to India sometimes before you really begin to understand or enjoy it. I wish I had done that on Thursday evening. Earlier on, during the wedding festivities, I had been dragged into the throng of dancers and musicians and, despite the persistent persuasions of many "very good friends", just couldn't let myself go and join in. Perhaps if I had just let go then, I would never have felt so unhinged and fed up when it came to staying with Gopals family... I really don't know!
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