A Marriage in the Family

Meet the newlyweds – Amrita and Rahul Maheshwari

Last month we went to India. We went there for a wedding, Anu’s youngest sister, Amrita’s wedding. The wedding was in Rohini, part of the National Capital Territory of Delhi.

Rohini, or more precisely Budh Vihar in Rohini, is a wonderful place. If you like mazes, this is the place to be. Budh Vihar is a real life maze, crammed to its boundaries with narrow streets, walled in by buildings, after buildings, after buildings. It is like the Maze Runner meets the Scorch Trials. I don’t have pictures of the streets of Budh Vihar. When you are attending to a 3 year old kid, in autorickshaws with no doors, or packed like sardines in a car, you don’t have a chance to pull out your phone or camera to snap pictures.

Budh Vihar is so crammed that the Delhi Development Authority (the government agency in charge of urban planning in Delhi) disowned it. (So sez one of my new relatives). Budh Vihar is about 6 sq.km in size (from my Google Map rough estimate), but must have at least a few million people living in it, looking at the amount of buildings and people and all that.

The people in Budh Vihar are very friendly. Especially to animals. In the entire Budh Vihar, there’re only 3 non-vegetarian restaurants (according to my meat loving brother-in-law Gopal, from Silchar, who had been exploring the place since he reached, a few days before we arrived). When we arrived, it was some religious festival, Navratri I heard, and so, even these 3 'non-veg' restaurants became ‘pure veg’. If I were still a toddler on this visit, I would've starved to death (yeah, I was a no-nonsense carnivore a long time ago).

Actually, our kids nearly starved because we stayed in a dharamshala (something like a hostel), instead of a hotel, where we’ve long grown accustomed to (the trappings of staying in a developed place like Dubai). The only food available was SPICY Indian food from the streets. No problems for yours truly and the missus (until we got back to Dubai that was, …that’s when the dysentery started, but let’s not go there…), but for the kids, it was a real ‘mouth-watering’ experience.

Staying in the dharamshala brings back fond memories of the many places we stayed in, in India. Building construction in India is fascinating. The dharamshala looks pretty new. I think the owner must have spent a fortune building it. But the way it was constructed was, ...what can I say, crude. So crude that it’s actually interesting! No, the tiling and the plastering were perfect. But the joinery, electrical and plumbing works?!? That’s an art! The art of ingenious short cuts! The funny thing is that most of the good maintenance workers, including electricians and plumbers in Dubai, are Indians! “In India, do as the Indians do…” I guess.


This ‘Dancing Table’ can be an art piece in some art gallery, but it’s actually a table stacked on top of another in the open-air flat-roof kitchen of our dharamshala. “Hey, kids! Don’t even think of going near that thing, OK?!? It’ll seriously hurt someone!”


The kids in the interesting kitchen, Aggarwal Dharamshala, Budh Vihar, Rohini – We learnt that flat bread (roti, chapatti) dough can have lots of uses. You can use it as paste to stick things together; you can use it as table leg supports for flimsy tables like the ‘Dancing Table’ above; and you can use it as a mat to remove the charcoals from the tandoor (cylindrical oven, seen beside the kids) - You can still see burnt roti on the tandoor’s air vents

Enough about the dharamshala. Here’re some wedding photos.


The bride flanked by Anu and Rini, the girls of Haulawng


Amrita with Ama, Royal Garden, Budh Vihar, Rohini, Delhi, India


Bride and groom on display at the rotating pedestal (yeah, seriously)


The bride’s sisters (2 of them anyway)


Family photo, Royal Garden, Rohini, Delhi


Indian weddings can be a lengthy affair – “Go to sleep Jayden, it’s 2am!”

Finally the main marriage ritual starts …at friggin 4am …Don’t people sleep around here?


Prayers, prayers and more prayers…


Standing, are the groom’s younger sister and brother


Wow, a bonfire!


“Round and round the fire, while we bless the pair. This side, that side, click selfies and share.”


Back at the dharamshala… Yours truly and bro-in-law, Gopal (on phone) in a photo with the Selfie-Kings (cousins of Rahul), Sekhar (in white), and ummm… I dunno his name. Between the two of them, they must've taken a thousand selfies, in a day!


Later that night was Ladies’ Folk Dance Night, on the roof terrace of the groom’s parents’ house – That in the middle in yellow, is the groom’s mother

There, one long post done. An achievement in times like these, huh?