It has officially been three weeks since we left Boston, and yet it feels as if it has been 6 months already. I can’t tell if that is a sign of settling in, or if it is foreshadowing of a long, onerous journey to come.
This past week Kelly and I joined in the wedding festivities of our friend Rakeeb (sp). Weddings in Bangladesh are typically 4-day affairs and polar opposites to those back home. There are familiar similarities such as family, endless food and photographs, but the rest of the days were so far removed from my memories of nuptials that it was truly a great chance to get to know the new culture.
The first day we attended was dedicated to the groom, while the bride is expected to remain at home and wait for her own reception the following evening. The women in his family were all dressed in matching red and orange saris, with the bride’s family all dressed in pink. There was a massive yellow alter in the front of the room, with impossibly bright lights directed towards him. All night, typically from 7-11pm, Rakeeb was expected to sit on a loveseat while nearly 400 people came up individually to take a photograph with him. Days before the wedding when Kelly and I were invited we gushed with him over how excited he probably was for the upcoming weekend, but he admitted to actually dreading it because of how awkward it is to be a bride and groom in a Bengali wedding. We thought that was weird, but seeing what the poor man had to go through for four days makes me think the word dread was soft. Spread out across the table in front of him is literally an assortment of 12 different snacks and meals, and a jar of orange gunk that is supposed to make his complexion bright. Every person that goes up is supposed to feed him a piece of food, and rub the orange mixture somewhere on his face—so much so that by the end of the evening his face was bright yellow, and he had to take stomach pills to not get sick from all of the food. Watching from afar he just looked awkward, annoyed and tired of smiling at the 800th picture. Rakeeb, if you’re reading this, please note that I did love your Aladdin-esque shoes and outfit, and everyone in the room ought to have agreed with your discomfort.
The next evening the groom is expected to stay home, while the same exact evening is replayed—nearly down to every detail—for the bride. I thought it was funny in this day in age to pay for the same banquet hall and food twice, rather than simply place the bride next to him on a chair and call it a day. BUT, as I’ve learned in Bangladesh, it is dangerous to mess with age old tradition and hospitality. Plus, I’m on a college budget so all of the deliciously free meals were on my side.
Finally around midnight the atmosphere loosened up and a DJ spoiled us with a great hybrid of English and Bollywood music. We danced until nearly 2 o’clock in the morning as one of Rakeeb’s sisters grabbed us and threw us into the middle of a ring of men and taught us how to swing our hips Bengali style. I was marveling at how easy it was to dance in a sari, until midway through a dance I noticed about 50% of it had unraveled and was spilling across the floor, exposing my entire stomach in one of the most conservative groups of people I’d ever been with. I thought I’d be slick and tuck some of it into other fabric and just let it hang, until Moe and Samit paused their laughing at me long enough to drag me off the dance floor and fix it. Apparently it is offensive to change or adjust your clothing in public, as I was told, so I have successfully added to my list of culture ‘woops’. We left the hall with Rakeeb around 2, and went back to his house which was a wedding fortress housing nearly 40 of his relatives and was draped in hundreds of white ‘chili lights’ (Christmas lights).
The third night was the day of the actual wedding ceremony, which took place early in the morning with only close friends and family in attendance. Later in the evening, the same night from before seemed to replayed over again still! The new husband and wife sat up on yet another stage, under even brighter lights, with more cameras, and now 600 people coming up in groups to take pictures with them. We got there around 8 o’clock—we had a major issue with the saris—and they were still sitting up on the stage when we left around midnight. We have been having women from a parlor nearby come to help us with our saris, after Youtube instructions and Moe’s supervision both failed me. After my sari was finished and I obnoxiously looked like a tall Cleopatra (sari was black and gold), the women announced in broken English that Kelly’s sari was too short, and told us to follow them. They walked out into the bustle and noise of Dhaka’s nightlife and led us up a tall pedestrian bridge that helps people cross streets above the endless traffic in the city. We hit a whole new level of staring. Pulling up 5 meters of fabric and tripping over children in the dark I kept getting lost in the crowd or separated from the women by a rickshaw. Rushing around the city all dolled up to find her a sari an hour before a wedding was certainly an unexpected twist to the calm Cinderella evening I had planned. However, despite the awkward presence of the couple on the altar, and the obstinate mosquitoes that laughed at my expired anti-itch spray from 2007, the wedding was beautiful and a fun time. One tradition that Kelly and I are still talking about is the mirror that the bride and groom use to look at each other for the first time. Obviously it was not their first, but for generations these mirrors were used in more traditional arranged marriages that are still used today throughout Bangladesh. I can’t imagine being handed a mirror by an excited relative, and looking in to find an obtuse, hairy face staring back at me waggling his wedding ring. I’ll keep my handsome man back home thank you very much.
So, I have given myself a new rule to preserve all of your interest in my trip: stop uploading 8 million pages of writing from my word doc. I initially started writing tonight to discuss my meetings at Grameen today and new knowledge about loan products, BUT instead you’re getting 2 pages about wedding fluff. Sorry! On a new assignment from one of our supervisors, Kelly and I are designing a simple web to explain the differences between varying types of products. Perhaps I will upload that.
I haven’t slept soundly in nights because of epidemic-status bug bites, so SLEEP TIGHT America—I love and miss you all.
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