Wedding Guest

by Floris Schenk (United States of America)

A leap into the unknown India

Kerala, land of coconuts and God’s own country. Palm trees, lazy backwaters and a minimal distance between starry-eyed male and female students of about nine feet. How in such a setting love has been made so tantalizingly inaccessible seems cruel. Naturally this isn’t an objective observation, I have grown up with a western perspective on love. Who knows how they feel about it? I didn’t ask, they were on the other side of National Highway 66, which I preferred not to cross if I could avoid it. I sauntered southwards with some sugar cane juice meandering about European versus Indian love. Strolls along the Indian highways are fascinating, you can stare at a beautifully decorated truck stopped in the middle lane with the driver having a nap with his feet sticking out of the window or wonder how it is possible that you haven’t witnessed an accident yet while a family of five on a motorbike swerves around a crossing stray dog. That day I was heading for a temple, nothing Lonely Planet would recommend, just a small local place. Around Kochi you can walk along any road and you’re bound to hit a temple (or a church if you’re unlucky, although Hindu shrines worshipping Jesus are a curiosity). So after a few miles I found one (the Kannankulangara Sree Mahavishnu Temple if you’re wondering), and as the day seemed to be all about love, there was a wedding going on. I took some pictures, I was probably a bit intrusive, but well, I was a teenager, inconsiderate as teenagers should be. I first took pictures of the couple as they walked around the temple. The groom wore a cream-colored silk shirt and lungi and the bride a white and gold saree. Soon I was pulled away by kids and families asking me to take pictures of them, stupid tourists were a rarity to them. After an hour, I signaled I was leaving — but that was underestimating Keralite hospitality. To my dismay (as I was in shorts and rumpled t-shirt) I got introduced to the groom’s family, was turned into a wedding guest and got offered a seat among elegantly dressed people for Sadhya: an exotic-dream meal served on a banana leaf with a tasting of some twenty-five dishes. A man seated next to me asked, by means of introduction, if I was married. This question is particularly recurring in India, it along with the occasional hint at an available distant relative, shouldn’t come as a shock. The first time this happened, an auto-rickshaw driver once made a detour to pass by his house to introduce me to his sister. I was so abashed that I forgot to pay the man. Luckily my Sadhya-neighbor didn’t want to couple me with anybody, and instead he asked about my parents. “They live in different countries, my mum in Holland, my dad in France” he looked puzzled, and asked if it was for work, “no they are divorced.” The man looked at me with a mix of pity and disgust. I explained that they simply didn’t love each other anymore. His face twitched with a sideways nod as if that was not a reason. “We do not divorce in India.” He said, and then added laughing: “You know in India it is much better to kill yourself then to divorce.” I never thought of divorce as something particularly dramatic, but my neighbor was already talking about his job as wedding photographer. I later learned about the terrible place in society divorced women have, it’s not as notoriously bad as the position of widows, but it can be enough to be disowned by family and hinder future relationships as they can be considered second-hand, or probably second-something-else. I looked back at the faces of the couple, hoping for the bride that they wouldn’t want to divorce or society would have changed by then. They look serene, the men and kids laugh and banter, the women smile and chat. Beyond my easy opinions, love and life seem to work here in foreign and complex ways and this was a happy feast under the coconut trees.