Madurai

This weekend I travelled to Madurai to attend the wedding of one of my colleagues, Vimal Raj.  The wedding ceremony was nice, but it was a Catholic wedding, so nothing too out of the ordinary for me (except for when they played techno beat synthesizer music during communion).  The reception was very low key.  After we ate a huge communal breakfast (ceremony was 7-8am), the bride and groom sit on a stage and then everyone takes turns walking past them and congratulating them and their parents.  Some relatives also place large flower garlands on the groom, which inappropriately reminded me of the Kentucky Derby, announcing Vimal as the winner!  After a while, the bride and groom go into seperate rooms for costume change.  It was at this point that I was complaining to my other colleague, Mani, that I have yet to see the super fun dancing at Indian weddings depicted in the movies.  But then some kids at the wedding got up on stage and started dancing to the Bollywood music that was playing.  Most songs here correspond to a movie, and therefore they all have specific choreographed dances that go along with them.  These kids, about 5 of them, ages 7-11, knew all the moves and performed 4 dances while we waited for the newlyweds to come out again.  It was a brilliant plan; an empty stage, music, captive audiene, what else could they do?!  I loved this part as it reminded me of putting on dance shows for relatives when I was a kid.

When we were getting ready to leave, they called me up on stage and draped a pink shawl around my shoulders and we all took pictures together.  Mani told me this is to honor me as a special guest.  how lovely!

 

Bride and Groom

After taking rest in the AC hotel for a big chunk of the afternoon, Mani and I went to visit Madurai's famous Meenakshi-Amman temple.  This is one of the 3 major holy Hindu temples in India, and I was lucky to see it!  The tis so temple is quite complex and how they even built such a structure in 1600 is mind blowing.  Pictures don't do it any justice.  We wondered around inside, visiting various shrines and stone carved statues.  It was probably the most amazing temple I've ever seen!

  

One of the towers of the temple

  

  

it looks as if he's saying "can't touch this"

There was an elephant in the temple (yeah, a real one) who was blessing visitors.  I had known about this from the elephant poem I was learning in Tamil (தொட்டு வாழ்த்தும் என்னை!).  I held up a Rs 5 coin and the elephant grabbed it with his trunk and then touched the top of my head.  It happened too fast for Mani to get a photo of, but here's one of the elephant;

 

I had to be back in office on Monday, and my train ticket not confirmed, so I had to take yet another sleeper bus.  But this one had AC, so it wasn't that bad.  I had to share an upper compartment (a bit smaller than a double bed) with an older woman who I didn't know, so that was a bit awkward (but just a bit).  I had had the window seat, but, eventhough she didn't speak any English, I could tell she was trying to tell me she was afraid of the edge so I offered to trade with her.  Also, she had a ton of bags and snored the whole night!  Needless to say, it was a pretty different experience than sharing a berth with Sathish on my previous sleeper bus ride; it's a tough call as to who makes a better sleeper bus partner!  The driver was a bit crazy, always slamming on the breaks, and, despite trying not to drink much, I had to pee most of the night.  Fortunately, we stopped at a place that had a very clean ladies toilet, so i was happy.

This Wednesday is Tamil New Year (well, it's traditional Tamil New Year, the actual new year was moved to Jan 14th by the Tamil Nadu government in 2009).  We have the day off at work and I'm looking forward to going nowhere and doing nothing!