Chamba Shaadi

She tied the red string with bells and seashells around my wrist, and smiled: "It is believed that if you receive this bracelet at the wedding, you will also be married very soon". "Great! But not too soon!", intervened Yuan. Sunny's sister only shot a devilish grin at us.

 

I sat there in the crowded room, thinking to myself over and over how incredibly grateful I was to attend this event - it had been my dream to be invited at an Indian wedding since before ever setting foot on the land. And this was already my second one! Not only that, but it was a North Indian wedding - ahem - meaning that it would last at least 3 days and consist of copious amounts of non-stop celebrations. To top it off, for me, those 3 days gave rise to some of the best memories of my travels anywhere (the bride and groom should feel proud, as this author has experienced craziness in over 27 countries so far :P).

I was there with people who quickly became the closest of friends to me. The energy of that time is truly irreproducible, but I will try my best to share some of it.

***

Day 1

After picking me up from McLeod Ganj on his bike, Vishal and I traveled around the Dhauladar range to get to the other side, passing some stunning scenery, rough roads, and a very cold Jot pass along the way. I sat behind him on the dashing black Hero Honda, listening to Eddie Vedder, entranced by this spontaneous trip and the views.

Five hours and a sore butt later, we reached our destination; Chambaaaa! I finally met the super duper cool groom, Sunny, and his family. I realised that over the next couple of days, I would be attending the groom's part of the celebration only. The bride-to-be has her own separate celebrations at her house with her friends and family, until they are married and the celebrations continue together.

We were some of the first guests to arrive, and we hung around, waiting for more people to appear. I relaxed in Sunny's neighbour's house for a bit, and spent a few minutes trying to communicate with an auntie. Everyone was incredibly lovely and welcoming, and I felt really privileged to be the only foreigner, but that's when I started wishing I could speak more Hindi. So during my "naptime", I whipped out my Pimsleur audio lessons and started on it. As far as my love of the language goes, it all started that day, and the rest is history :).

I then met more and more of the guys' friends - many of them knew each other from college days, and were also super duper cool! Although, according to Sunny's mom - who kept trying to veer me away from the testosterone influence - I should spend more time with her during the wedding. So I helped her to split cashews for some time, in preparation for a rice-based dessert.

I clearly suck at this

As evening fell, it was time for sangeet. Sunny's mom sat me down in a room where the women and children had started to gather to make music. It was cute and all, buuuut it was a little too tame for my taste :P Ok, granted, there was some fun dancing started by some of the younger ladies as well. But still, I was curious to see what the boys were up to. And, as a foreigner and an observer, I had the privilege of not necessarily having to follow traditions to a T.

So I entered the next room. The difference in ambience could be felt instantly - the smoky and alcohol-tinged air stung my eyes, voices were louder and more relaxed. I sat there, slowly beginning to feel comfortable amongst this crowd of younger generation desi guys. They were also just as shy to speak to me I think, not purposely trying to ignore me (plus the language difficulties). And they were, for the most part, quite decent people. The whiskey helped. Eventually, I began to be integrated in the conversations more and more, and I was brute-forcing my brain to try to understand the language as much as possible.

The next couple of hours were spent going between the two rooms, if anything, at least to escape the heavy smokers. But if I thought the night was coming to an end, boy was I ever wrong. The families probably went to sleep, but the 3 idiots - Sunny & sidekicks - plus myself got in a car and went to pick up Sunny's couchsurfer, Yuan, from the bus station. Her bus was supposed to arrive around 2am. From then on, I would no longer be the only foreigner in Chamba. (I later found out that Yuan had been staying in McLeod Ganj for some time before this, and even stayed at the hostel where I had stayed, only a few days before I had arrived! So we had spoken to some of the same people there, including the French girl. I remembered that this girl had told me about a Taiwanese girl who Couchsurfed and was trying to convince her to do the same. Small world syndrome happened quite often in the world's second most populated country.)

We spent more hours in the car, having chai, watching donkeys go by in the dewey cold night, and listening to an incredible line-up of music. (My friends in India listen to - and play on guitar - Neil Young, among others. In fact, they knew more songs of his than I did at the time! This Canadian author felt slightly ashamed.) Eventually, we finally rolled back to our sleeping quarters, and I caught a glimpse of the daylight seeping in as I fell asleep around 5am.

Photos: Wedding in Chamba