Chennai Trip -- Day 3: Wedding day.
But yes, Raghu & Helen’s wedding, did get me up early and we scooted in a rick to an unknown destination through a dark tunnel (to the faint-hearted – Subway) and narrow roads where even Ollie would have found some difficulty walking. Finally reached the splendid Green Park hotel and was drawn to the wedding by the smoke emanating from the sacred fire.
Raghu looked like he could use a T-shirt and jeans and Helen looked simply sparkling. With most Christian weddings it’s a simple exchange of rings, with some South-Indian weddings, it’s a toe ring that is adorned on the bride to symbolize that she is now married. After quite a bit of difficulty, the women folk managed to slip the ring through Helen’s toes and were roundly applauded by all the men folk. Nice joke!!!
It was funny watching Helen(since she was a protestant by birth) go through the motions but she seemed quite excited about the whole thing. Unfortunately her husband did not seem all that excited. I guess we can blame it on the late night booze party :)
The good thing about most Hindu weddings is that you can spend about 10 min watching the wedding and then next 20 min having lunch/dinner. A friend of mine once told me the most important part of any marriage is the Photo-session. Make sure you have your pic taken with the bride and groom which is like the attendance muster or in web parlance… guestbook!
After what seemed like pure torture for Raghu, he was finally able to put down the garland of thorns … I mean roses too and started counting his bruises. Poor Chap !!!
Quite a memorable day though for him and Helen.
After lunch, we hopped onto another 3 wheeler but not before I told the driver the destination and the fare that I was going to pay… only 40 bucks and not more than that. Well we reached our hotel just fine, but the driver suddenly turned hostile and strated mumbling words like 100 and 60 and the word 40 seemed to be some disease that he kept shaking his head and then gave me the choicest Tamilian gaalis when I chose to walk away from him and headed inside to our hotel. He followed us to the lobby and then after 5 min of verbal exchange between him and the receptionist, I finally paid up and extra 5 bucks and this time I was shaking my head.
Afternoon snooze and in the evening went out for a walk … we didn’t dare take a rickshaw :) . Bought a few souvenirs for folks at home and came back to our hotel.
posted by Nev @ 12:39 PM
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