Week 6:

I realized yesterday that I only have about 40 days left in India before heading back home. I really need to get on the ball about setting the rest of my plans in stone!
My birthday was this week, and while I didn't try to organize a party of any kind, birthdayish things kept popping up. A few girls that work at Cisco offered me some cake that was left over from an activity earlier in the day, completely unknowing that it was my birthday, and instead of playing modern Indian music in the Cisco gym as is the norm, there was some Audioslave and White Stripes!

In other news, I discovered that after attending a ritzy rooftop sushi & world cup party in uptown Bangalore last weekend a picture that was taken of a few friends and I ended up in the Bangalore times and the Deccan Chronicle. I guess it doesn't take much to make headlines here.

This week held a bit more Indian culture. During the week we discovered that we were invited to attend a wedding of a coworker at Cisco, which was being held here in Bangalore. We arranged to attend the wedding with Kumar and Sagar from the TAC lab. We arrived just in time, as the groom was waiting with his back to the brides entry, and a sheet being held in front of his face to prevent him from seeing the bride until the right moment. The ceremony was being performed by a Brahmin Priest, dressed in the traditional costume a priest would wear; I don't have a picture so you'll just have to think along the lines of a slightly heavier 50-year old Gandhi. Accompanied the entire time by the ringing of bells and a very loud "orchesta," (link to picture later) the two got married! The hall was very elaborately decorated; the center of the stage had a golden wedding pavilion, decorated with flowers, coconuts, and burning incense. In spite of the strong lighting that had been set up, the photographers felt it necessary to mount industrial strength bulbs on their cameras, causing momentary dizziness anything you glanced into one. At first it was just the priest up there speaking to them and ringing the bell, then somebody started bringing around a big bowl that people were pulling something out of. My first reaction was "fantastic, audience participation and I have no idea what is going on..." Fortunately it was just a bowl of rice which we were to take a small handful of and throw at the couple at the appropriate time. The bride and groom tied small ropes loosely around each other's hands, symbolizing their new bond, and the groom tied a necklace around the bride's neck, with 3 knots in the back, making the marriage official. They then sat on chairs facing each other and holding a coconut in between them while the audience came by, pouring coconut milk and maybe a few rupees over the coconut, sprinkling them with rice, and expressing their congratulations and blessing.

While the crowd of ~200 guests filed through, meals were served in the floor below the main hall. Large rinsed banana leaves served as the plates, which the caterers covered in biriyani, white rice, curry, onion vada, puri, papad, and a few other things I don't know the names for yet. As a gift from the newly-married, everyone was presented with a small coconut as a token of their appreciation in attending the wedding. I later found out that the coconut can be used as a symbol for goodness and health, which is why it's so prominent in Indian ceremonies.
On the way home I snapped a few pictures of some (hopefully) temporary housing, showing how some people even in developed areas of India still live.

Initially the plan was to go to Bandipur Forest this weekend, but it has been pushed off for another week due to the wedding. There are a few more things I'd like to write about, I'll try for another update during this week.


-Scott