Following another lovely dinner of paneer and peas, lentil dall and rice, some of us decided to go to the wedding of a local girl with a man from Kinnaur Valley, the next valley over. We met up at around 10 pm and waited to be told that they were ready. At about 10.30 we set off up the hill to the wedding tent. Passing various other revellers we entered the tent, walked up the end and sat down on 2inch mats, cross-legged again.
At the end next to us was about 4 Spiti men in red hats and 4 Kinnaud men in traditional green trimmed hats with a white handkerchief folded in a triangle and a bunch of fluffy seed pods, pinned on. We were offered Chang, barley beer, or Arrac, a white liquor with a fiery taste. There was a lot of activity going on in the middle of the room and lots of white prayer scarves were handed out, our third one of the trip. This was followed by a lot of shouting and checking in a book. A young lady came and sat beside me and her English was good enough to help me explain some of what was going on. Apparently, in Kinnaur it is the tradition that everyone who has been invited gets a scarf, so they were checking who was here or not and giving the spare ones to a member of the missing family to be taken back and this is very important to them, so the proceedings got more and more delayed. Quite a few families were missing as there had been 3 young men killed in motoring accidents in the last week and they were in mourning. The men with hats had removed them and some were lying on their backs, snoozing.
Some activity took place as new black and white mats were put down and a swastika, with blobs was created in barley, the bride sits in this to help promote fertility. Eventually, well after midnight, there was a stir and the men from Kinnaur put on their hats, got up and went off into the dark. A few minutes later a band came back in followed by the men in hats and the bridegroom, a man in a red hat who was leading the bride and a bridesmaid.
They settled themselves on the mat, the bride had an amazing headdress of silver and aquamarine and never raised her head. Then one of the bride's side started intoning prayers, stopping every now and then to take a sip of something, at the same time people were coming up and giving money. Some of them had made a fan of the money with names of donators pinned to them, some of them had huge wodges of money with names of givers, wrapped up in a prayer scarf and a few had wrapped up presents in bright paper.
We took this opportunity to hand in our small donations and leave as it was getting on for 2.00. We struggled back down the hill and fell into bed, where I had the best night's sleep for a week.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
At the end next to us was about 4 Spiti men in red hats and 4 Kinnaud men in traditional green trimmed hats with a white handkerchief folded in a triangle and a bunch of fluffy seed pods, pinned on. We were offered Chang, barley beer, or Arrac, a white liquor with a fiery taste. There was a lot of activity going on in the middle of the room and lots of white prayer scarves were handed out, our third one of the trip. This was followed by a lot of shouting and checking in a book. A young lady came and sat beside me and her English was good enough to help me explain some of what was going on. Apparently, in Kinnaur it is the tradition that everyone who has been invited gets a scarf, so they were checking who was here or not and giving the spare ones to a member of the missing family to be taken back and this is very important to them, so the proceedings got more and more delayed. Quite a few families were missing as there had been 3 young men killed in motoring accidents in the last week and they were in mourning. The men with hats had removed them and some were lying on their backs, snoozing.
They settled themselves on the mat, the bride had an amazing headdress of silver and aquamarine and never raised her head. Then one of the bride's side started intoning prayers, stopping every now and then to take a sip of something, at the same time people were coming up and giving money. Some of them had made a fan of the money with names of donators pinned to them, some of them had huge wodges of money with names of givers, wrapped up in a prayer scarf and a few had wrapped up presents in bright paper.
We took this opportunity to hand in our small donations and leave as it was getting on for 2.00. We struggled back down the hill and fell into bed, where I had the best night's sleep for a week.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
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