Thursday 28th November 2019
Today was all about Gobi and Kavi's wedding and this is the longest post I have made, with the most photographs (all from the wedding), but I felt it was worth giving you all the full description in words and pictures of what was an extremely special day for Gobi for Kavi and for me attending it!
I woke up excited to be attending my first Hindu wedding today, having
even had a lovely gold-coloured top made in Nuwara Eliya to wear for the
special occasion! I arrived at the Sri Ambal Cultural Hall, where the wedding
was taking place, around 10:00, having been picked up on route by Carol, who
was in a tuk-tuk, dressed in a beautiful sari. We entered the building and our
foreheads were anointed with a special coloured marking, which they believe is
a ‘third eye’, the centre of a person’s nervous system and the area in which a
person can see spiritual truths. We sat down well away from the stage where the
ceremony was taking place, but were immediately asked to move forward to the
front row, which didn’t feel right, as we were weren’t important guests at all,
but we knew they would have been offended if we had refused their request to come
forward.
The initial ceremonies had already started before we arrived, but
Hindu weddings are very different affairs from what we are used to. People come
and go throughout the entire ceremony, musicians play, and people chat though
the whole thing. It lasts so long you even get drinks brought round to you
constantly throughout the ceremony.
There was some sort of blessing for both families to start with and then one
for the groom (still in casual wear) and then the bride (all beautifully dressed
up). After a long pause, the groom returned, dressed a bit like a sultan
prince, for another bit of ceremony, before another long pause!
Finally, what appeared to be the actual wedding ceremony began with the groom processing down the central aisle of the hall and the bride then appearing from the side. A very elaborate ceremony then took place, with various offerings and anointings (the groom anointed the bride at one point and she then anointed him). Food offerings that had been blessed around a small fire were then taken round the guests seated in the audience, so that they could join in the blessing. Rice was also given out to everyone and we stood just in front of the stage and, at the appointed time, threw it at the married couple! There were a few concluding bits of ceremony and then the actual wedding bit was over.
However, that wasn’t the end of it. People then queued up to go on to the stage to present their wedding gifts (mainly money in envelopes) to the newly married couple and be photographed with them. This took hours and the newly married couple must have been exhausted by the time it was over. I went on stage to give gifts from James and Beth Houston and myself and then went downstairs for a delicious lunch (I sat with Donald, Ladushan and Ramesh, who appeared just before lunch, having come from Nuwara Eliya). When we went back upstairs after our lunch, the married couple were still standing on the stage receiving guests and I had to go up on stage again with everyone from Maskeliya School, as they presented their gifts to the married couple and we all had our photograph taken with them as a group, before we then left to go home. I felt honoured to have been invited to be a guest at such a beautiful wedding, having only known Gobi for such a short time, and it was a magnificently colourful occasion that will stay in my memory for a very long time.
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