Attended a Kannadiga wedding in Bangluru this week.
Different foods, different customs but same old indian people! The things
I really liked were following:
- there is generally no buffet business every meal, breakfast, lunch, dinner is served to you on banana leaves which are then folded along with the sheet-paper table cloths and discarded - clean, hygienic and environmentally friendly too.
- I loved it that there is always breakfast in south indian marriages, since they are generally all early morning people. What better way to kick start any do than with hot idlis, sambhar, dosais, pongals, kesri bhat(sheera/halwa) nd Kaffee??
- The chutneys and salads were all very yummy - and so healthy! Sprouts, pomogrenade seeds and grated fresh coconut, all mixed together..(only wish it had a tadka of green chillies!)
- The various and numerous courses of rice i could do without and skip straight to the sweet dishes served up at the end - the crisp vermicelli rounds (like the Parsee sutarpheni of Mumbai) served with powdered sugar and badam milk, the coconut nd jaggery puran polis and the boondi laddoos... i didn't get why this is served at the very end though?
- But the one custom that i really, really liked was the way the Pundit/ priest conducts the post vedic-marriage rituals festivities... I found this feature common in Tamil as well as Kannada weddings... the bride and groom are made to play a number of games, conduct mock trades with much bickering about money: all to put forth the notion that marriages are ideally about sharing- but it is ok for someone to have the upper hand too..hehe!
- There was NO CUSTOM or RITUAL AT ALL THAT WOULD INDUCE HYSTERICAL RONA DHONA LIKE YOU SEE IN THE NORTH, RIGHT UPTO MAHARASHTRA... I really, really loved it that there was no 'bidai' where the bride goes around touching everyone's feet and saying adieu... in fact in this wedding i attended, she got to sit in her sasural wallahs' laps and they were told firmly that she had to be lavished with love and attention..
This one practise they should adopt all over the country... and that day will come soon! Even in this wedding, the 'ladka wallahs' were from Bihar and Delhi- so the wedding tales will go across the length of the country even in this one instance.
VIVA THE INTER STATE LOVE MARRIAGE - LET'S HAVE MORE OF THEM!
