My sister's wedding

I originally thought I would write a detailed account of all the millions of tiny ceremonies that went into the making of my sister’s wedding, but it proved to be impossible. Mostly because we were organizing the wedding ourselves and this meant that I was at the beck and call of anybody who wanted anything. I even had to struggle to see the wedding itself, but I managed somehow. So I will just briefly describe the events, knowing full well, that I cannot even come close to capturing the feeling of a traditional kannadiga wedding or even the meaning of the various ceremonies and events. The photographs are on a website somewhere, so I will link to them as soon as I find out exactly where.

My sister-Vibha, married Kapil, a chemical engineer who’s originally from Pungnoor in Andhra Pradesh. Kapil studied in Bangalore perhaps all his life, i don't know, he's always been here:).

The first phase was the two ceremonies for the bride (deverasamaradne) and groom (vara pooje) that were attended only by the immediate families. This took more or less an entire day. The next day we had the actual wedding which went on from around 7 in the morning till 4 in the afternoon. Since we had decided to not have a reception in the evening, all the guests were forced to turn up at the wedding itself and there was a huge crowd. We estimated that approximately 1000 people showed up. It was quite a sight, and a bit strange because I knew only about half of them. The next day, Kapil’s parents and relatives came over to our house for lunch. Actually, according to custom, its expected that the groom’s side invites the bride’s side for lunch after the wedding, but because they were from out of town (the wedding was in Bangalore), we decided to reverse things a bit. The next day was a bit of a break, but we had a nice gift unwrapping session, which was quite fun. The next day, our immediate family traveled to a temple in Kadiri a small town in Andhra Pradesh that is around 5 hrs away from Bangalore where they were conducting a ‘kalyanotsav’, wherein the wedding is enacted between the god Lakshminarasimha and his two wives, Bhoodevi and Sridevi. The temple of Kadiri is very nice and built out of stone, though the temple authorities are now trying to plaster every inch of it with marble. The idol is supposed to be one that had ‘emerged”, ie probably a stone formation that resembled the features of this particular avatar of Vishnu. It was an uneventful trip back. Finally the wedding related activities came to a close and I was able to roam the city like a recently freed felon.