Naliya + Sangli

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MIDC Miraj. Sangli - Miraj Road

Rangoli

Typical Day in a Wedding Hall 5: Decorations

Flowers

Dining hall - backdrop

Stage backdrop

Jeep

Disposable dining table cover

MIDC Miraj. Sangli - Miraj Road

What's a wedding without naughty cousins?

While everybody throws grains of rice to bless the couple during the main ceremony, they showered noise, confetti and currency notes from the Kids Bank of India.

The ideal couple.

Typical Day in a Wedding Hall 4: A task for naughty cousins

Read the full series here. Typical Indian Wedding.

MIDC Miraj. Sangli - Miraj Road

Running hot water

Typical Day in a Wedding Hall 3: Bath Time

After a short rest with mosquitoes dancing around you, there's only one way for the army of relatives to look their best for the wedding. It's to have a nice hot bath.

The smart ones are up earlier than the rest and this one place where the Sangli-Mirajkars are faster than the Mumbaikars.

Mumbaikars are quick in Mumbai. But the minute we are out of our inverted beehive shaped city, we are slow. So we watched the locals decked up and ready, the energetic old aunties plastering turmeric on the groom and his family.

The symbolic crushing of turmeric.

Wonder what's the secret of her energy. Silk or gold?


Another aunty was singing aloud, the old songs hand written for the occassion.

Given the fact that nowadays, there are now 5 times more people above 60 in most families in South Western India than people below 20, the groom was napalmed with hands full of turmeric paste and neem leaves and 100% sanitized through traditional methods.

Read the full series here. Typical Indian Wedding.

MIDC Miraj. Sangli - Miraj Road

Typical Day in a Wedding Hall 2

Actually it must be a typical night in a wedding hall. Or the morning after. No one really sleeps on the night before a wedding and it's not just because of the mosquitoes singing naughty tunes, or cold breeze. It's just that it's Hum Apke Hain Kaun? time.

The extended families of the bride and the groom were staying under the same roof. They broke ice like a nuclear powered russian ice breaker in no time, playing Dumb Charade, Men and boys Vs. Women and girls. By dawn, they were all relatives. The bridegroom was running around all night doing little errands and making sure guests who keep trickling in at odd times found a corner to sleep or joined the game in progress. No one noticed or ignored the group of youngsters who quietly finished a few bottles of whiskey in the corner. One of whom you can see snoring away as the Turmeric Ceremony happens in the other side of the hall.

The bride had her own little room. Locked up with a few relatives and I assume, the jewelry.

Read the full series here. Typical Indian Wedding.

MIDC Miraj. Sangli - Miraj Road

Typical Day in a Wedding Hall 1

Air Instruments

There's no Indian Hindu wedding without an air instrument. It's break time for the band at a typical wedding hall, on the road that connects the industrial twin towns of Miraj-Sangli. The trumpet player took time off to try some complicated tunes that his clumsy instrument with as many tones as an elephants trunk would allow.

No one was listening.

We are deaf, we love jet engine background decibels and brass bands, shehnai and nadaswaram, however loud they are, is elevator music.

That hat is an original Indian design.

North or South. Shehnai or Nadaswaram. You find Bollywood playing Brass Bands everywhere.

And before the band takes over, the master himself on the PA speakers. Breathtaking, if you pause to listen.