Summer in South India Part 2 (or how to say "I do" in Malayalam)

After we landed in Kochin we had a multi-hour drive to Ranni, our first destination. This was a long and perilous journey that only served as a type for the many like it, an ominous foreshadowing of Indian travel. One of the hardest things to get used to in India, for me, was the terrible infrastructure and lack of enforcement of motor vehicle laws. The roads in India, when paved at all, are full of potwholes (like potholes, only they swallow your car whole) and drivers pay no mind to the apparently optional lane lines painted on the road. Roads twist and turn with no reason and the width varies by kilometer. Rather than turn signals and patience, flashing high beams and honking horns alert other vehicles to your presence and/or desire to go around them. People drive in between lanes, straddling dotted lines, weaving in between three wheeled motorized rickshaws and helmet-less motorcycle drivers in a race to be the first to the scene of the imminent accident. India is not for you if you are at all prone to motion sickness. One of our team members, One Shoe Osborne, spent most of every vehicle ride trying to keep the curry down. Add to that the painful fact that the car we were using would play a version of "It's a Small World" that sounded like what would happen if the car had run over the CPU then tried to run a DOS game featuring the MIDI tune. On more than one occasion the tune got stuck and stayed on for the duration of our hours long journey. I was not thinking very missionary-ey thoughts by the end of those trips.

Upon arriving in Ranni we stopped off at a hotel. Now, when I say hotel, I mean restaurant. Why, then, do I say hotel? Great question; I'm glad you asked. I have no idea. For some reason (well, that may not fair. I assume there is a reason, but that can pose to be a dangerous assumption in India) restaurants, irregardless of whether or not there are rooms for rent on a nightly basis, are called hotels. So, we stopped at a "hotel" for dinner. One of my favorite things about India was the food. I love Indian food (to the point that Susan, Andy's wife, is convinced I need to marry an Indian woman so I can eat it all the time... surprisingly tempting). I love spicy food, so a country that puts hot peppers in everything (including their donuts!) is all right with me! And food is cheap! We could go out and get more food than any of us could eat for nominally $4 each (including drinks and dessert).

South India is beautiful. I mean, stunning! To be honest, I was not expecting that at all. My only frame of reference for India was watching Slumdog Millionaire and Outsourced both of which take place in North India (imagine if you thought all of America looked like Manhattan and then you fly into the Redwood Forest of Northern California). We arrived during monsoon season which meant the heat was not too bad, but the humidity is always just below breaking point, exceeding it every few hours for a brief and unannounced downpour. When the rain comes the power goes and it is anyone's guess as to how long it will stay off. Although disconcerting at first I no longer even noticed it after a week or so.

One of the first things we did in Ranni was to go shopping as we recovered from our jet lag so as to have appropriate attire for the wedding we were to attend. This is a picture from the after-party event where we all visit the groom's home and the wife is "given over" to the new family. I looked like Aladdin.

The ceremony, in its entirety was beautiful. The wedding itself was (again) not what I expected. We started the day with a huge photo shoot at the bride's home (while the same event occurred simultaneously for the groom and his family at his home). It was odd being in the pictures since I did not really know anyone and I can imagine years from now their wedding album full of random white people that were there for only a week or so. But, they insisted. After the glamour shots were taken we were chauffeured to the church in the rain where we hobnobbed some more (being white in South India is like being a rockstar in Kansas; everyone wants a piece of the action and a picture with you).

The ceremony took ages to start, but once it did there was not so much as a pause. There was no down time from beginning to end (just shy of an hour). The photographers / videographers were present and active the entire time. They paced the isles with cameras rolling. Rather than the sporadic imposition of flash bulbs, however, they used ultra bright spotlights mounted atop their equipment that blinded us every time they turned our direction. I'm talking about construction site strength blinding halogen beams of red-eye. It became a game to time it just right to duck as the cameras spun our way. I'm sure there will be a lot of pictures of the tops and backs of our heads. I still see spots.

One of the most interesting things about the wedding was that the entire ceremony was sung by three alternating pastors and every once in a while a small choir would chime in. It was like watching a Malayalam version of Handel's Messiah. Unlike an American wedding, where you sit for the ceremony but stand for the bride's entrance and exit, we stood for the entire ceremony except for the bride's arrival and departure. This proved to be exhausting in the heat.

After the wedding we were served an amazing Indian food feast (which, I suppose, when in India, is just called a meal) where the priests and newlyweds ate on a stage for the guests to watch.

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Once again, stay tuned for another post about our trips to the actual orphanages (do you like how I have written two posts and still not covered the aspect of the trip that was the driving force behind going to India?)