Elsien's Traveblogue

Am back in Jaipur for a night, after spending the last 8 or 9 days (lost track of time) in a small Indian village with a large Indian family ....
By a pure stroke of luck I found myself adopted by this family in Rajastan and got involved in the weddings of two of the many nephews, Rinku and Bablu. I've attended almost all of the wedding ceremonies, and there are lots of them: exchanges of 'contracts' , gifts and dowry, blessings (too many ceremonies to remember, all involving burning cowdung and lots of the red stuff), the actual wedding do's in the grooms' town, Phulera, and also in the brides' places, one of them even further away, so the whole wedding party of more than 50 people got on the train for 14 hours to have the wedding and pick up the bride. There was a lot of singing, drumming and dancing, mainly by the women and dancing, especially by me: like in the Pacific, my dancing style seems to go down well with the locals, especially with old crones and small children, and I've become a veritable Dancing Queen. Of course lots of eating as well, but more family meals tham banquets. I've become quite Indianified: can now eat even the sloppiest currie with the fingers of my right hand only, can do the other thing with my left hand when I ran out of toilet paper (none to be had in Phulere) - have had my hands henna-painted, have been press-ganged into buying and wearing a saree and lots of bangles for the actual weddings, sky-blue, much admired by all, but find that sitting cross-legged on hard stone floors for hours on end still rather a strain on my poor legs and back, but it's getting better. I can also not blow my nose with my fingers! (No tissues either! I've been using old newspaper - ouch!)
I've eaten all kinds of food I've never had in Indian restaurants anywhere and enjoy it immensely. My stomach and intestines only protest when they get overloaded as too much gets pressed on to my plate which I cannot refuse. I impressed them all by munching a raw green chilli and have become addicted to sweet, milky Indian masala tea, so I am looking forward to be 'on the road' again and loose all those extra pounds I've piled back on.
I've learnt ever such a lot about Indian family life as well as women's lot here. I've made friends with one of the brides, a young woman who still rather looks and sounds like a little girl although she's 21 and has done 2 1/1 years of College, a commerce course. I hope it'll come in useful one day as she's abandoned it to get married and now, as a new wife, she cannot venture out of her room on her own, only to go to the bathroom. She has to keep her face almost completely covered and will be kept in semi-purdah for at least a few weeks, after which she will become another housework-slave with a couple of kids very soon. Her new husband, on the other hand, appeared at the second wedding, while she was left at home with an auntie she didn't know, and got completely drunk (the new husband, not auntie). It was of course an arranged marriage, but she told me that she had more or less fallen in love with the picture she'd been sent and when she first met him, really, really liked him. She did seem quite smitten and told me she was "really happy", but I didn't dare ask her whether they "did it" on their wedding night and how she felt about him coming home drunk on their second night! Her sister-in-law, married for some 5 years is constantly in tears as she toils with a difficult small baby and total lack of husband support - mind you, she doesn't do anything else either. The youngest daughter, 27 and still unmarried runs a lot of the household, but she will get married next year, so these two will have to pull their weight as Mama-ji mainly sits on her large bottom, doing a bit of curry stirring - there is a maid as well.
While I haven't done any sightseeing since Jaipur, the Pink City in Rajastan, this has been much more interesting. I have now fled back to Jaipur for a night with semi-Western comforts at Maggie's guesthouse: a sit-down toilet with toiletpaper, hot water, a bed, chairs and a cold beer!
More later - I have to re-think my itinerary!