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Day 175
Very excited to be going to a Hindu wedding. My friend Zena lent me some beautiful traditional clothes - the girls and Rufus went scruffy as usual. I burst the zip the minute I put it on - Fern suggested maybe I was bigger than Zena but I think it was faulty, shoddy, cheap workmanship. Got the zip fixed in a local tailor for 10p - and we set off at the ridiculous time of 8am to go to 'Auntie's house' for the first of the day's many dal bhats. Have I explained about dal bhat? It is the Nepalese traditional dish and consists of sticky white rice and lentils. Basically the lentils are in soup form and you chuck them over the rice. Often the meal is accompanied by spicy pickle, a potato curry and usually a surprise - sometimes pleasant, sometimes not. Goat skin - not pleasant, pumpkin curry - pleasant. I find Nepalese food hilarious, as there is only one dish. Dal bhat. They eat it two or three times a day - and they never deviate. Honestly, never. So when Rufus and I pass a Nepalese restaurant, we fall about laughing as we describe the menu to each other - one blank page, one dish at the top. No options. What's the special? Ha ha.
Auntie's house turned out to be a slight disappointment - it was freezing, walking about barefoot on stone floors in a dark house with no heating and all the doors and windows open. It is hot here but not in the shade and not in the morning. I am always surprised to find in houses that there is no living room, so we end up sitting on Auntie's bed as we wait for the food to be prepared. The sitting about lasts for many hours - as many enthusiastic local faces came in to peer at us eating - before heading off to the wedding. I was excited to see an arranged marriage and was not disappointed. The bride was way more beautiful than the groom and she spent the ceremony looking glum and looking away. He looked quite pleased through his thick glasses. They spent most of the wedding sitting on plastic chairs while guests poured flowers and red paste all over them and gave them envelopes stuffed full of money. She took the money quickly and shoved it into her friend's fake crocodile skin handbag. We wondered if they were planning to run away together at the end of the day. I kept an eye on the bag all day - there must have been thousands in there. One word to Clover - 'go and nick that bag' and we would have been off. Made for life. Well, made for about another few weeks, rupees don't get you that far. The couple then wander round a shrine of flowers and statues, holding a rope that ties them together. It was quite a nice sentiment. I think he was planning to use the rope later.
More dal bhat was produced and everyone gets mortally offended when we politely say 'no thanks, we're full'. So we force down more lentils and rice, the girls are nearly gagging but are polite and we shovel it in. No wonder I am bursting zips, I can't do this level of carb intake. A lot more sitting around follows, the wedding kind of lacks ceremony and purpose - people chatter throughout, answer their phones, eat food, look away, get up and down, wander about. Nobody is really facing the bride and groom anymore - and the bride certainly isn't facing the groom. She is facing her friend and eyeing up that crocodile bag.
There was no alcohol and we tried to explain the cultural differences to our Nepalese friends. 'In Scotland by now, everyone would be plastered and there would have been at least one fight between the two families, someone would have nipped out to buy recreational drugs, the groom would be snogging a bridesmaid in the disabled toilet, a drunk uncle would have groped his own niece, local gatecrashers would be at the buffet, the best man would be arrested and the bride would be in tears'. They seemed quite pleased with this explanation and agreed that sounded a lot of fun. But at this wedding, there was also no cake, no music, no dancing, no photographs, no toast, no speeches, no first dance, no first song - and all the lovely things that make our weddings so emotional. This felt like a formality, a contract - and indeed it is. This is not a 'love marriage' they explained. It made it all feel a bit sad. Although our marriages normally end in divorce, at least they start with love. But we wished the couple well, shoved some cash in the crocodile bag, took some back out and left.
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