The daughter of the chair of the Civil Engineering Department married this week. The wedding was held at the Shri Gopalakrishna Temple in Mangalore, a city 30 minutes south of the Institute. A lower floor has a dining room where breakfast was served to arriving guests and later lunch. The floor above was for the ceremony. The top floor was the temple.
The ceremony is a lengthy (hours) process with many rituals that are directed by a Hindu priest. There is a stage that is beautifully decorated with flowers at the front of the room. Chairs in front of the stage seat whoever is not on the stage. Unlike western weddings, the guests do not sit and watch all the ceremony to the exclusion of all else. Guests socialize, visit the temple, eat downstairs, and come and go. Family and friends go on the stage to take photos. A band plays music simultaneous to and usually seemingly not synchronized with the ceremony. Some of the rituals are familiar: rice is handed to everyone to throw to the couple on stage for good luck.
The bride and groom are elaborately dressed. So are family, some of whom stayed at the guesthouse. I am relieved that the engineering professors who are not part of the ceremony are dressed as I am, like engineers (not shown). There may be many cultural differences, but engineer attire is not one of them.
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| Divya, Professor Shivashankar, Debmalya, priest |
That evening there was music and a buffet dinner at a big reception room in one of the guesthouse buildings. The next day the wedding party moved to Kolkata where his family resides.
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