by Dave Prager
And unlike at our synagogues and churches, there didn’t seem to be a script. Every ceremony seemed to progress solely at the direction of the pandit. In fact, from the way people watched the pandit for cues, it seemed like no two ceremonies were ever the same.
Even funerals proceeded without the structure we’d expect in the West. As we watched bodies being cremated on the Ganges at Varanasi or at the Pashupatinath temple in Kathmandu, the deceased’s family was solemn and serious, but life beyond them continued as normal: sadhus chatted with each other, laborers stacked wood for future burnings, dogs sniffed around, and men spoke on their phones. Nobody seemed to be on their tiptoes but us.
We eventually understood that in the West, religion rarely extended beyond four stained-glass walls. But in India, religion is everywhere. It’s inside and outside of temples, it’s behind cash registers, it’s in front of sidewalk shrines, it’s in alcoves built into bedroom walls, and it’s in idols Velcroed to taxicab dashboards. Even mosques extend religion beyond their boundaries: the faithful who arrived too late to fit inside our local mosque during Friday afternoon prayers would just kneel on the sidewalk outside. Which meant that if every Indian tiptoed around every religious expression like we were accustomed to doing, nobody would get anything done.
So while the pious would worship, everyone else would go about their business. And there’s something to be said for spirituality that flows even as life flows all around it.
The more we learned about Hinduism, the more overwhelming it seemed to us. Seemingly simple questions—“How many gods are there in Hinduism?”—would be answered by a dozen different people in two dozen different ways. We concluded that the lack of definition to the religion was the definition of the religion: from what we could tell, Hinduism was a religion in which any expression of reverence was accepted as canon. With millions of gods, who is to say what is or is not the right way to worship them?
So Hinduism is what a Hindu says it is. Westerners may see that as a tautological definition, but that’s what we observed: not a single religion with a billion adherents, but a unifying label for the billion different ways a billion different people express their spirituality.
After Diwali, the next major Hindu holiday we celebrated was Holi. And like Diwali, Holi began with a pooja at the office. But I was in a meeting that ran late, so I missed it. By the time my boss Murali and I returned to the office, the pooja was over and everyone had gone home except for Navin and Sanat, two of the youngest employees at the company.
As soon as I sat at my computer, Navin rushed up to me with an orange cardboard box. “Have a sweet, Dave!” he smiled, mischief in his eyes as he held out a box of round orange pastries that were slightly smaller than ping-pong balls. I took one and picked off a bite-sized piece with my fingers. That revealed a shiny black lump glistening at the center of the sweet.
“No, Dave,” said Navin, now grinning far too broadly to be trusted. “Eat the treat in the middle!”
Sanat popped his head up from behind Navin’s shoulder. “Make sure you eat that part, Dave!”
So I did. It was bitter. Navin and Sanat’s cackles attracted Murali, who beamed proudly upon learning what I’d just done. “That’s bhang,” he told me after I’d swallowed. “You should have three more to make sure you have a really good evening.”
I only had one more. But it was still enough to give me a good evening indeed.
That’s because bhang is a narcotic preparation made from the cannabis plant. Although drugs are illegal in India, bhang is sold by certain government shops for religious uses. And while Holi is known even in the West for the colored powders and dyes people throw at each other to celebrate it, it turns out that bhang is just as important a part of many people’s Holi celebrations.
The next day, we hailed an autorickshaw to travel to a Holi party at a massive farmhouse in Chhattarpur, in the distant south of the city. As we drove, we saw glimpses of our Holi to come: shirts stained with splotches of color, a man with bright pink skin, teenagers throwing water balloons from their cars, and wandering cows with their hides completely painted over. But somewhere close to the party, we got lost; we could hear the sound of heavy electronic music but we couldn’t find it. Figuring we were close enough, we dismissed the auto and followed our ears on foot. And as we walked through this unknown neighborhood, a group of five or six teenage boys approached us with Holi fun in mind.
We’d both dressed for Holi in white Indian-style outfits we’d bought specially for the occasion. Jenny wore a simple white pajama top and I sported a thin white kurta that came down below my knees. And these teenagers knew that such pristine whiteness on Holi called for immediate action. After politely asking my permission, each teenager solemnly dipped his fingers into a bag and, with faces deep in concentration, carefully smeared colors onto my forehead: surreal greens and vibrating pinks straight out of a Grateful Dead poster. Then each one gave me a deep and joyful hug before walking on, and the electric colors on their shirts rubbed off on my own.
A few minutes later, we finally found the party. And the moment we stepped through the farmhouse’s gate, our white clothes were a distant memory. Just inside the gate was a table stocked with Holi ammunition that dozens of people were gleefully throwing into friends’ faces, smearing into strangers’ hair, and tossing at each other by the bucketful. The pictures I took at the event (I’d studiously wrapped my camera in plastic before we left the house) record how our Holi unfolded. In the first picture, the left side of my face is caked unearthly green from the handful of powder someone threw point-blank at my ear, while a spattering of pink and yellow descends down to my dye-soaked kurta. Jenny’s photos show that she began the party with an instant foundation of yellow upon which other colors were layered as a complement; only in the last photo does it disappear, covered up by an exuberant burst of red everywhere but for a yellow slash near her hairline.
Our final picture from the party shows the two of us together, both of us smiling with glazed eyes, our hair matted with color and speckled with grass, grinning stupid smiles that could mean one thing: we were both absurdly high.
The bhang I’d been given at work was just a warm-up. Servants had been wandering this party bearing terracotta cups of green water. Sweetened bhang, as it turned out. Supposedly, there had also been bhang in the desserts and even in the ice cream, which explains why we spent the last hour of the party sitting on the pink grass and staring at the green people, unaware that we were directly in front of the DJ’s ear-shattering speakers because we were too obsessed with one particular long-haired, bearded Indian who, but for his skin color, was a perfect doppelgänger of our friend Ryan. From the pictures we reviewed later, we learned that we actually followed him around the party taking surreptitious photos with the camera at hip-level. If he didn’t notice us stalking him, it was only because he’d enjoyed as much bhang as we did.
When we’d finally had enough, we somehow found an autorickshaw to take us home. We have no photographic evidence from this ride, but Jenny recalls feeling utter terror as a convoy of open jeeps passed us somewhere near Mehrauli. In the backs of the jeeps, massive men held giant guns and stared cruelly down at us. Her squeals attracted the driver’s attention, and at a red signal he abruptly turned in his seat and stared long and hard, contemplating the pink and green foreigners who were smearing Holi colors all over his back seat. And then he began laughing—gently, pleasantly—and for an eternal moment we were sliding through the tunnel of his gaze. And then the signal beyond him turned as green as my left ear, and his laughter ascended into fading flute music as he faced forward again and jerked the auto back into drive.
We remember the rest in snippets: Hauz Khas market was surreal in its emptiness; the hike up our stairwell took hours; and then we were showering, and then we were eating a dozen bags of potato chips, and then we were showering again, and then it was tomorrow.
Jenny’s hair was green for days. And for weeks I found red stuff every t
ime I cleaned my ears. I can’t say we learned any more about Hinduism, but we sure learned to love Holi.
Of all the aspects of Indian life we’d hoped to experience in Delhi, we were most excited to attend our first Indian wedding. Everything we knew about them came from movies and from our friend Heather who had been lucky enough to travel all the way to India for the experience. So we expected five-day feasts in which every invited guest took a week off from work to enjoy an uninterrupted flow of homemade food. We expected 3 a.m. wake-up calls for intricate ceremonies involving choreographed elephants and ring-bearing monkeys. We expected rituals so elaborately rehearsed that any deviation from the millennium-old inflections would, in accordance to some ancient moral code, force both families into a year of mourning.
Our experience, of course, was different. First of all, weddings only seemed to be multi-day events for the closest family members. And from what we could tell, the participants spent the bulk of those days sitting in folding chairs, holding half-finished plates of food, comforting the bride’s mother as she broke into sudden wailing hysterics, listening to the bride’s brother shout at the caterer, and waiting for someone to figure out what was supposed to happen next. While there were multiple ceremonies that happened over those five days, Jenny and I were only invited to experience two of them: the weddings themselves, and the mehndi ceremonies, which took place the night before the wedding.
The mehndi ceremonies we attended were relaxed and intimate affairs. Though open to both genders, they’re probably akin in their pampering and animated gossip to an American bridal party getting their hair and nails done. The bride and her closest female friends and family sat on stools as young men hired for the occasion patiently squeezed henna into elaborate patterns on their arms and legs. We watched as peacocks, parrots, and other symbols and figures materialized within the complicated webs of drying dye. (“The mehndiwallah also hides the groom’s initials somewhere in the henna,” my colleague Mahua told me, “which the groom has fun finding on the first night.”) The designs created by these henna artist opened our eyes to the potential of the medium: they were far more beautiful than what the hennawallah who sat in the Hauz Khas market glooped onto the forearms of our visiting American friends.
We enjoyed the mehndi ceremonies more than the weddings themselves. That’s because we actually got to interact with the bride and groom during the mehndi. At my co-worker Sharbani’s mehndi ceremony, for instance, Jenny and I chatted with the happy couple while multiple generations of aunties laughed uncontrollably every time Sharbani dragged me out to dance my flailing bhangra. If there were any formal rituals, none of the guests seemed expected to pay attention to them. Instead, Sharbani would quietly disappear from her henna application along with her fiancé Tapan for what we assume was a blessing. She’d reappear a few moments later to corral everyone onto the dance floor for another round of laughing at me, while the henna artists put down their tools and waited patiently for her return.
Like the poojas we observed, the weddings we attended were far less ritualized and rehearsed than those in the West. At our own wedding, Jenny and I had jettisoned many of the ritualistic elements (our ceremony itself was all of five minutes long), but it still followed a script honed by tradition and Hollywood: we had a formal presentation of the bride, ceremonial family photos, and an official announcement of our entry into the reception as “man and wife.” And like most American weddings, ours was still meticulously scheduled down to the eleven minutes we allocated for guests to eat their salads. American weddings may vary based on religion and personal tastes, but almost every one will still have somebody consulting an itinerary and throwing a fit if things go off-schedule.
Which couldn’t be more different from the weddings in India we attended. We saw no visible signs of schedule or structure, and almost no interaction between the couple and their guests. Instead, the guests just busied themselves at the buffet while the bride waited out of sight for the groom to show up. Nobody seemed to know what time the groom would actually arrive on his horse-drawn carriage, and nobody seemed concerned when midnight passed and there was still no sign of him. When he did eventually pull up, heralded by a brass band in parade uniforms, the street outside the venue would fill with men dancing furiously while the bride’s mother wailed and, above it all, the groom sat and looked terrified. A few ceremonies and blessings were tossed at the groom as he made his way from the carriage to join his bride on a raised dais, but the dancing throngs quieted down for none of them. And as the betrothed and their families prayed or chanted on the dais, guests would come and go as they pleased, snapping a few pictures with their phone before heading back for another plateful of golgappas.
“There is no structure in a typical Indian wedding,” Mahua confirmed. “Just awareness about a bunch of customs that have to be undertaken. Those things just fall in place.”
At only one of the weddings we attended were the majority of guests still present when the bride and groom finally began to receive them. We all rushed to hand them flowers and compliment their outfits while uncles and aunties dragged cousins and business relations up to pose for pictures. Aside from that, the weddings we saw were all buzzing vortices of celebration swirling around a bridal nucleus that was almost wholly removed from the happiness pulsating in their honor. The new couple just looked dazed and unhappy as they were led around the event. (And apparently their disposition is also part of the tradition: the bride is meant to appear devastated that she’s saying goodbye to her family, and the groom is obliged to look terrified of his wedding night obligations.)
It’s no wonder that Sharbani was much more concerned that Jenny and I come to the mehndi ceremony than to the actual wedding: at the wedding itself, there was no allowance for her to enjoy the presence of her friends. In fact, as we walked into her wedding with a few of our mutual friends, we saw Sharbani and her family performing some sort of ceremony in the main room. Following our friends’ lead, we stopped and watched for no more than a few minutes before we all dashed to the buffet.
I don’t remember speaking to Sharbani at any point during her wedding. But I guess that’s okay—that’s what the mehndi was for.
Jenny and I dated for four years before we lived together, and we lived together for eighteen months before we got married. Sharbani and Tapan got married after having spent no more than a few hours actually being face-to-face.
It wasn’t exactly an arranged marriage. Nor was it precisely a love marriage. It was instead a union of both: a traditional institution modernized by new technology, changing mores and cheap airfare. Sharbani and Tapan found each other on one of the matrimony websites that are replacing the matchmakers who show up at prospective families’ homes with binders full of photos and bios of potential matches. They began their relationship by speaking on the phone a few times, which went well enough that Tapan decided to fly from Bangalore to Delhi to meet Sharbani and her family. In Delhi, they shared two hours of conversation in the company of Sharbani’s parents, followed by a chat at a coffee shop the next day. The next time they saw each other was in Bangalore, when Sharbani and her mother flew out to finalize the details of their marriage.
“I had the right to say no,” Sharbani said when I asked if her parents would let her reject any matches they proposed. “My parents always respect my decisions.” So while this was not an arranged marriage as we expected from the movies (in which two families meet and bargain in the bride-tobe’s living room, and the girl sees her new husband only when she is called in to present tea on a silver tray), it was not a love marriage in any way Jenny and I could relate to.
But they love each other now. In fact, this is the most heart-warming aspect of Sharbani’s story: after they agreed to get married, Sharbani and Tapan began to court each other. Sharbani flew to Bangalore to surprise Tapan for his birthday, meet his friends, spend time with his mother, and join Tapan on walks around the neighborhood in which they’d soon live. Together they drank coffee, ate d
inner, and gave each other gifts; and then, as Tapan drove Sharbani to the airport for her return flight to Delhi, the betrothed couple held hands for the very first time. “I’ll miss you,” Tapan told Sharbani. They didn’t see each other again until he flew to Delhi for the wedding.
Their story contains all the elements of a Western marriage, but in a different order: first came the engagement, and then came love, and then came the courtship.
In fact, of all the married couples we met in Delhi, only a few conformed to our expectations of Indian marriages. Some of our friends met along a traditionally Western trajectory: they dated, they fell in love, they got married. One couple we knew had a unique twist to this story: the man and his wife dated surreptitiously for years with the knowledge that his parents would never agree to a love marriage. So when the time came, they got a trusted friend to innocently suggest this girl as a potential match to the boy’s parents. To this day, the boy’s parents have no idea they got scammed.