Counting Days…

The ultimate marriage date was coming close. Preparations were going on. Indian marriages have lots of rituals before marriage. Those rituals started with a bang. We used to practice dance every night. Few years back, it was really easy to get people together, but now everyone is grown up. They have their own life and hence become difficult to get them together. Anyway, we still got a bunch of people to rock the stage. As per tradition, we asked everyone who would like to perform, some said no and others yes. Eventually, we had around 13-14 performances which were enough for fun.

I guess, I skipped some rituals before dance night. The first was “Jawara bona”. Plant wheat seeds, which are then considered as Goddess. By this date, house was filled with many guests. It’s considered good, people are taking time off to be in the marriage, to celebrate. Even with recent trend, there were enough guests. In night time, we used to have formal dance practice, followed by dinner and free form dance.

The second ritual was Haldi (Turmeric). It is applied 5 days in advance and then every day until marriage. It brings out natural color of skin and considered good. From this day onwards, the bride and groom are considered godly and are not supposed to do any of the household chores. It’s awesome. You are not even supposed to take water and drink on your own, someone will hand it over to you, quite interesting.     

The 3^rd ritual was Mehandi (Heena). A temporary tattoo applied to all the close family members. It was not applied on me as it was scheduled the next day being the Groom.

4^th comes a special one-which announces that marriage is near is Mata Poojan. All close family members’ visits a temple and worships Goddess and invite them to the wedding. It was cool, me and many family members gathered on this day. It was just 2 days before marriage, hence most of the people were there. We went temple dancing and came back the same way. We even danced in the temple.

Then mehandi was applied on me. It’s good to take some rest after that, so that we are not disturbing the wet tattoo and allowing it to dry for better color. The longer it stays, better it becomes. I also applied some oils on top, so that it remains intact. It’s said that more color means more love. Looks like it might be true.

In the evening, we worship the God with dance and colors. I was still sleeping by this time. Relatives woke me up and called down. It was a colorful atmosphere; everyone was dancing and blowing color.  Those are the best times in anyone’s life. This is the 5^th ritual, known as Satsang.

At first, there was no plan of dance night (Mahila Sangeet). Then we booked a small hall and in the end it was decided to take it to another level and book hall in the marriage garden itself. The hall was small, so people gave all their attention on the performances. Sounds like blessing in disguise. There were plenty of people even for the dance night. We tried to keep it small, but even these few people were enough to fill the hall completely.