Wedding in Senji
December 10th 1995
The next morning at about half past seven, the clerk called for me and took me into the wedding ceremony. By the time i got there, Jenny was already inside the hall and had a seat in the front row. I stood at the back, with a whole crowd of people and watched for a while. There were two televisions, one on either side of the stage where the ceremony was taking place. These were showing the wedding video as it was being filmed by two camera operators and simultaneously mixed by a third operator. I thought it was an impressive video setup for a small country town like this.
The bride and groom were sitting on the floor facing the audience and the person who was conducting the ceremony sat in front of them. They were wearing colourful clothes and garlands of flowers and doing all sorts of little ritual things. There were musicians playing non-stop throughout the whole ceremony.
After a while the hotel clerk came and got us and took us into an adjoining room which had long rows of tables and chairs. Banana leaves were put on the table in front of us and we were served breakfast. It consisted of a variety of different food, including idli, bonda, pongal (which is sweet rice), vadai, some sweet greenish stuff and a banana. Other people were eating there as well.
When we'd finished, he led us out of the eating room and out of the wedding hall. Everyone leaving was given an orange plastic bag each. In these bags there was a small coconut, a little packet of betel nut and a couple of paan leaves.
We went back to our rooms and got ourselves organised to go back up to the fort. On the way out of the hotel again, we met the groom's father and he insisted we went back into the wedding with him and had our photos taken with him and the bride and groom. It was a bit weird, me in bare feet, shorts and a sleeveless t-shirt, covered in tattoos and with a mohican hair cut. I probably would have been forcibly ejected from a wedding in Britain and beaten up for even trying to get in looking like that, but here i was, being dragged in to take part in the wedding photos and video!
On our way out the second time, we got given two more orange plastic bags with coconut, betel nut and paan leaves in them.