Marriage, Set 1
Getting married to my girl. Pretty colors, happy faces, good times.
Marriage, Set 1
Yes, I got married recently. The girl is Neha Pandey and is a smart Statistician. We met when I was skydiving and she was examining the aircraft wings to determine the orthogonal deviation of static resilience.
The date is 28 June, 2005, and we settled for a small, private marriage at Neha's home. Very few people were invited, just the closest family. As a result you'll see the same faces again and again. Don't mind.
This is the bride and the groom. Neha and Vikram. Get used to their faces, you'll be seeing them an aweful lot.
Before the marriage started out, we took photos of the bride, groom and family. Neha is standing with her parents, and I'm next to mine. The priest made all three couples say good things to each other, now that they were all together and all that.
Colonel Pandey and Mrs. Pandey celebrated their own marriage, and there was a lot of tika putting.
The same was done by my parents, and then we all sat down, and got ready for the ceremony. My parents were on my left, and Neha's parents were on her right. There was a sound of a hundred clicks, as everyone primed their digital cameras, cell phones, computers, video cameras. Eight people but a hundred devices.
Lookup the couple, all ready and willing to start! Tushar (Neha's brother) and Pooja (his wife) were also around, getting Navya (their baby) all ready. Tushar is the person who took all these lovely pictures, with generous help from Pooja. So if you like these photos, send me email and congratulate us, but only after complimenting Tushar on the fantastic photos. The little Navya put on nice traditional clothes, and got ready for the ceremony herself.
Navya is still in the room adjacent to the ceremony hall, while the bride's hand is, well, handed over to the groom. That's me, and everyone is super happy at giving the hand over.
More handing off. Some words were said by the priest, after which I was the proud owner of very lovely female hands! Lucky me! I sure hoped they wouldn't identify all the parts as they were handed over. A quick transfer would be nice. Separate body parts could be accounted for later.
Neha's brother, Tushar (Major Pandey for you) is looking on, and he is required to hand off his sister, and promise not to beat me up when he sees me with her.
As you can see, the fire has been lit, and is being tended to by all present. It was great fun, with us putting sandal wood sticks, a powdery mixture (of cowdung and other fun stuff), and pure ghee(!) into the fire to keep it going. That's for Agni, the God of fire, who is the prime witness at any Aryan wedding. Pooja, on the far corner of the room is dutifully video-taping the whole process for the future.
Here you can see us putting stuff into the fire. Mrs. Pandey was then called upon to make the holy sign on a leaf, and to hand it over to the bride. At this crucial moment, both Tushar (The Major Pandey) and Pooja (The Real Major Pandey) were called upon to assist in the ceremony. Navya, (Absolutely The Real Major Pandey) was in the adjacent room, sleeping. You can see the chain of command clearly.
Some more ceremony. I was taken aback by the beauty of the bride and I blanked out. Make out what you must. I'm busy.
This was the fun part of the ceremony. Neha was asked to put her hand on my shoulder, and recite a few vows. They were all good, about her continue being the warm, gentle loving creature she is. I was thoroughly enjoying myself, since the priest was explaining all the vows in clear Hindi, and also translating his Sanskrit chants into Hindi to explain what just happened.
Then I was made to stand up, and recite some vows. They were all about how I'll continue eating and become a fat happy content lala: just like the laughing Buddha.
Here I am, standing up, and promising good things to my bride. Promising not to interfere in house affairs. Which is just as well, since I usually have no concious recollection of house affairs anyway. I promised to take good care of the lovely Neha, not to compete in the marriage, not to lust after other women, since they were all boring anyway.
My mom seems to be having quite a nice time. I wonder what the joke was, but I'm laughing too.
Promising some more. I was up there for quite a while.
Now we all stood up for the seven rounds around the holy fire. Yoohoo! The excitement was killing me.
No wait, there was some more promising to be done. Neha had to promise some stuff, about how she would be a good wife and all that. These things are all pretty standard, and you'll have to look hard to find marriage vows in which the bride vows to burn money and cook sloppy food. So use your imagination, it was the standard stuff: be happy, show restraint in spending cash, take care of elders, consider my family her own. Gone are the days when the bride promised to keep the husband miserable and poor. Sigh!
More promising, on the part of the lovely Miss N. Major Pandey is video-taping the event, and Dharmendra, a family friend, looks on.
In a shot that will probably win an award, you can see the entire wedding setup, the priest's back, parents, and also a person videotaping the event. We shall submit this to a competition.
Yes we know you're tired: Carry on to the next set. Bad things happen to those who break the holy two part wedding photos in the middle. Mike Brown, a trucker from Cleveland did that, and he rammed his truck into a car the very next day. You have been warned!
This page was last modified at: Sat Apr 29 10:28:24 PDT 2006