June 16, 2006
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Vacation and a Wedding II
Seems
that the only time I go back home is for a wedding these days. This
time was one of those occasions. My cousin’s son (he’s 5 years older
than me, if you’re wondering) was getting married, so it was time to
leave DC for Nashville and then Huntsville for the actual wedding. It
was nice getting out of semi-Yankee Territory for “God’s Country” once
again, where the waitress will get you sweet tea if you ask instead of
looking at you funny and pointing at the sugar.It was also great timing, since I was able to catch over half of the World Cup matches for the first week.
Anyway,
the game plan was to arrive in Nashville on Wednesday evening, leave
for Huntsville on Friday afternoon, then head back with my dad to
Murfreesboro on Saturday evening, go up to Cookeville to visit my best
friend back home on Sunday evening, return to Nashville on Monday
evening, and finally head back to DC on Wednesday afternoon.
WHEE!!!
Gate Ceremony
I’m
not gonna go into great details about the wedding itself. For those of
you familiar with Indian or Bengali weddings, there are typically
several ceremonies and weddings will be anywhere from 3 days to a week.
My personal favorite part is the “Gate Ceremony”.
The
objective is to get the groom through the entrance to the wedding hall
as intact as possible and with both his shoes. On the other side is the
bride’s family, who prevents the groom from entering until he pays up
(usually enough to treat them all to dinner). Typically negotiations
will start between representatives of the groom and bride, which end
with the groom’s shoes stolen and some money passing hands. This time
we were a bit more successful: under our limit for the “entrance fee” and the groom kept his shoes. Or sandals. Or whatever.Negotiations
were… interesting. It ended up being the groom’s brother and me (plus
a few uncles) representing his side, and some other family friends /
relatives representing the bride’s side. Something like:
B1: All right, you want to get in it’s gonna cost you
G1: How much we talking about?
B2: One-thousand dollars
Me & G1: A thousand? You’re insane!
Me: (whispers) Look, how ’bout we slip you $100 each and you let us by
B1 & B2: Can’t do that, gotta look out for my family
(G1 and B1 enter into serious negotiations, the price is now down to $750)
Me: (to G1) What’s our limit here?
G1: We got $300
Me: (whispers to B1 and B2) What do you say to $100 for each of you and $5 for all the others? You don’t have to tell them anything
B1: Make that $150 for each of us
Groom: …
(More negotiations between G1 and B1 + B2, price is around $350 now)
G1: $250 total, we can’t do any better
B1: Two fifty? Your cheapness is keeping two people in love apart from each other.
B2: You’re gonna let a hundred dollars stand in the way of true love?
Me: Hey you’re one to talk! You keep upping the price!
B1: We came down from $1000 to $350, that’s pretty generous
G1: Bring it down to $300 and I think we can deal
(Negotiations finally get through on the $300 figure)Keep in mind, all that is a dramatization. Actual events were longer, though the general idea is constant.
Anyway,
other stuff’s still been going on, so I got more material for updates
coming up. Perhaps not as interesting, though. ‘Til then anyway. KF
