The Indian Wedding Season 1: The Journey

1. The Local Bus

“You can be ready in ten minutes?” says auntie, drying her hair while walking through the dining room. I stop half way through my bite of left-over sandwich, a favorite breakfast in our house. “Mhmmm.”

I've been rushing around for the last couple of days between school and preparation for the upcoming weddings. Luckily for me, I'm only a guest, and a peripheral one at that. Unluckily for me, the first punjabi suit I picked out was terribly out of fashion and would never do for the wedding. So the better part of yesterday went to finding a suitable suit, with the help of Virali and Auntie, the former boutique owner. Now I've got a top with a suitable degree of bling, those bottoms that crunch up at the bottom (giving the lowers the feel of a 1980s leg-warmer/tights combo) and a little extra borrowed bling.

So this morning, I rush around a little bit more, hitching a ride with Auntie, who's hired a driver in to help her as she prepares for another wedding. Two bags and a rapid ride later, I'm in an Indian bus station.

Now, I've already taken a train during my time here, but it was one of those super-deluxe AC cars. Hardly taxing. Today I'll be taking a “local bus” for the hour and a half ride to Patiala; the reputation of which would make Chuck Norris a little bit uneasy. “A local bus?” Virali had exclaimed, mouth lingering open in a semi-smile of shock.

Here I go.

I hand the man 95 rupees (two bucks) in exchange for a printed receipt and climb on to the dread local bus. So far so good. It's a little grungy, but most people on it seem fairly normal and nonthreatening. I grab one of the open seats at the very back, my pack a convenient barrier for as long as the bus stays somewhat under capacity.

Just as the bus is pulling off, and I'm getting quite comfortable, on jumps an old man, whom as something between a homeless man and a sadhu. He's wrapped in old cloths, looking fairly emaciated and perhaps a little wise (or crazy?). He takes the seat next to mine and gives me a nice long (about forty minute) stare.

I decide to peg him as a sadhu, a wandering aesthetic, whose current wanderings require the speed available by bus. And maybe his staring is actually meditation on the nature of diversity and the innate oneness of all beings. Anyway, it's much more pleasant than the alternative. At the next stop, a middle-aged Sikh man sits between us, and the old sadhu disappears from my sight and thoughts behind a large yellow turban.

Meanwhile, the bus is rolling through Indian cities and countrysides, and I'm enjoying myself beyond what might be considered normal. I'm the kind of person that finds deep satisfaction from a 20+ hour Greyhound bus ride (I have taken more of these than I can count), who finds the experience of sitting on these grungy, mundane transports terribly romantic. There's something about the communal nature of these buses, the earthiness; something about being on the ground, watching time and space fly by with a sense of destination, a feeling of being in a journey, of awaiting the mystery of the destination, no matter how intimately you know the place.

So needless to say, what's going through my mind on my first Indian bus ride is something along the lines of “finally!”

I want to see India, not to be separate from it by barriers of glass and iron or status and class. I can think of no better way to see it.

Even for those who do not typically enjoy being on a bus, an Indian bus is certainly something to see. They're often decorated with religious or other imagery; those up near Patiala carried images of the Gurus and bands of flowers offered to them. Then there's the music, which isn't on every bus, but is on quite a few. It all feels terribly local and wonderfully Indian to be riding a packed bus with blaring local music, ornamented by the frequent (consistent might be a better word here) honking horns.

2. To the Wedding!

I arrive in Patiala, where I'll meet the other volunteers and the family of Volunteer in India owner Leon, for the rest of the journey to Karnal. Outside of a lavish house in Urban Estate, Phase 3, wait men dressed in finery: Leon's father (the Colonel), looking sharp in his western suit and turban, and Alan, a Canadian volunteer turned Indian prince in his fine Indian suit (which, unfortunately for me, has more bling than mine).

“What's wrong? Why's everyone waiting outside?” I ask in something between a greeting and a tail-between the legs gesture.

“The ride is three hours,” the Colonel tells me. Apparently I'm late. Oh well, I'm living in Indian time now.

Indian time is this wonderful, frustrating phenomenon that can be blamed for the almost inevitable tardiness of just about anything that happens here. At school, the teachers walk in about ten minutes after the period has begun. Guests show up an hour or two late, ready to be fed. Appointments, like the lines in the roads, are really more of suggestions than anything else. Hell, even the washing machine here lives on Indian time; I once waited two hours to hang my clothes, at one point of which I was actually standing in front of the machine when a little whimper escaped my throat.

I head inside, change quickly, and Indian time kicks in again. I come out, fully adorned for the wedding (as much as someone like me will tolerate, at least) and it looks like we'll be hanging out for the next hour or so. We're waiting for the wedding party to leave, as well, so it turns out that it's really no rush. In the next room, the photographer/volunteer Erika has turned hair dresser as she meticulously braids the hair of the Colonel's wife.

Eventually we're off to Karnal. The wedding will start...soon?