The Village Marriage - part 2 (The Suffering)

As soon as I entered the village, my first sight was a pond, I dont know what else to call it, the water was black in colour, and had black buffalows in it, which were hardly distinguishable. The houses were of brick only and had no paint on them, the first good thing of the day happened here. We asked two village boys, exactly the same age as ours, about Pragat's house, both of them didn't tell us the way, instead they walked 2 kms. with us till the house, knocked on the door and told pritpal's mother that we have brought your guests, and then they went back as quietly. That stuff was awe-inspiring. Being from a city where if I ask someone the way, he would not stop for a second to tell me that, this stuff was amazing. i now had a feeling as to why my dad wanted to come to the village.

We entered the house and sat inside a room that had a cooler and the latest DVD system with 5.1 music system. wtf... why the hell wont they spend half of it to get the the house painted. Nevermind, there came pragat with a glass full of tea. now the glass was twice the size of the biggest glass i had ever seen. He said to me that boy beacuse you are from delhi i have brought you tea, else we here drink lassi. I mean this much tea would have been consumed in next 10 days had it been in a thermos, but it was in a glass or a jug as it would have been called in delhi.

Then, her slder sister came with a plate full of sweets. and the eating continued for the rest of the day. i was not used to this kind of a welcome. and i was ready to stay there as long as they served me like this. Man I felt like a king. In the evening there were a few celebrations. I must mention that my friend pragat singh whos getting married is a preacher of sikh teachings, this is his full time job. The marriage was expected to be simple but what came ahead baffled me. We were told to sit in a line on the cots in the verandah and fed sweet rice with sweet curd. thats it. I thought that were starters and I kept thinking but nothing else came, except another round of the same. I asked randeep about the dinner and he told me to shutup and eat it and thats what I did.

Then we went to take a walk around the village fields while the sun was setting. The sight was too good. There was deafning silence everywhere, now at this time i am used to hear horns and all kinds of noises, but the silence was so calm. Within next 20 minutes there was darkness and of course no street lights. We went back to pritpal's place. There in the verandah they were setting a DJ what the @#$%^*@#$ Man they could have certainly given us good food. The DJ, pragat later told me was set up by his cousins without telling him and that led to a lotta disturbance in the house, he wanted to keep the marriage as simple as it goes.

Anyways I saw a lotta bhangra and did a bit myself too. then while we were leaving the village gals came up to the stage for giddah, everyone still kept going and to my amazement no one looked back, may be they had seen it a lot too often or they were not supposed to and did not, I still managed to steal a few glances. and also identified the ones i need to look at tommorow morning !!):

there I was heart broken and dead tired and we were told to sleep in veerandah, i was given a cot beacuse I was a delhiwala and wont be able to sleep on the floor, I made meagre noises and even offered my cot to someone else to show my generosity. But i didnt ask much or they would have gotten a feeling that i genunily dont want it. Then I would have cursed myself to death. The guys started having heated discussions on a couple of topics, they werent interested in my opinion bcoz i was a delhiwala, but i still managed to make quite a few meaningful interjections and was able to convince them of my intelligence, atleast thats what i still think.


Next day morning I woke up with sun shining on my head, i thought i had missed the marriage when i saw everyone sitting near me and drinking tea, even pragat was there. I looked at the watch and it was 7 am. I was offered tea but i wanted to brush my teath. i was given a mug and was told to go to the handpump. wtf. I should have backed out of this trip. but again i had no choice i went to handpump in the fields. straight out of bed. While i was comming back i saw a bunch of girls passing as soon as they saw me they started laughing. what the hell. have they not seen a dude before. At least i had my teeth all brushed. the girls, I must mentioned consisted of the bunch i had marked out yesterday. Murphy GOD.

Next task was to relieve myself. I am not too sure if I should be saying this but man I require a clean toilet. I just require it. What i was given instead was something that had turned black with dirt and had walls the height of my waist. Did i mention that it was in the middle of where buffalows reside. I am sure it was made for them. I some how manage to survive what felt like eternity. I went back for the bath at the handpump. That was a difficult task. i need to tell all this to my dad and am sure he wouldnt talk bout a village ever again. and i aint comming back.

The marriage was as simple as Pradeep wanted, after the marriage, while i was checking out the food the same bunch of girls came and started talking to me, they were also laughing for no reason. i was about to drop dead. I manage to sneak out of the conversation that centered around me. The food was good. Infact simple but good.

We all meet with the couple, laughed a lot. And then came back to the rooms where we had kept out luggage. We packed it as we were about to leave. We left the village at around 5 pm and took a bus for Amritsar. We spent a day at Amritsar and from there Pritpal and icchpal went back to delhi, as they had to rejoin their respective offices. We roamed different parts of punjab i.e Jullandhar, Ludhiana, Taran Taaran for the next three days, but we never stayed at a hotel, randeep would manage to find a relative or a friend in every city of punjab and they were all more than happy to let us in for the night.

The last four days we were to spend in randeep's village in Patiala. We stayed the night of our sixth day at one of randeep's relatives in the patiala city. When we took a bus to randeep's village in the morning. the state transport bus had a television and luxury seats it dropped us a kilometer before village. and we walked the entire klometer.

Contd...