This weekend saw me hunt for several random – non supermarket items. Firstly some kerosene with which to clean my bike chain, which the ever wise internet assured me would do in the absence of branded bike degreaser. Seeing as every other Nepali has kerosene stoves and it is winter you would have thought kerosene shops would be numerous. However I couldn’t find any anywhere until one shopkeeper volunteered a small boy in his shop to show me a kerosene shop. There followed a silent walk of about a mile down winding lanes until we came across the kerosene shop – which looked like every other shop, but had some tanks of kerosene out the back. Fortunately kerosene is sold by the litre (in old coke bottles) and I didn’t have to lug a huge tank of the stuff back to my house. Kerosene seems to work very well as a de-greaser, but it stinks, and is best administered outside me thinks.
The other item I was looking for was a crow bar, as there happen to be bars on all my windows and this is rather prison like and in a fire or an earthquake or armed robbery, or indeed any other calamity that could befall me, a crow bar could be most useful for prising open the bars and making an escape – should the normal exits be blocked… however I soon realised that not knowing Nepali for ‘crow bar’ made finding one impossible and so I gave up rather fast and returned home – cycling up the hill I encountered a hoard of Maoists waving red flags and chanting something (alas not directions to the crow bar shop) which was quite exciting given they had stopped all traffic…
The other excitement of the weekend was a Nepali wedding… some friends and I were invited to our Nepali teachers, brothers wedding, and we thought it would be an interesting experience so we decided to tag along, despite not knowing the bride and groom, and indeed not really knowing the Nepali teacher either. I was expecting some sort of lengthy Hindu wedding ceremony with Saris and people chanting and puja-ing all round, but no, randomly it was a Christian wedding, in a massive church – which even looked like a church at home… well if you ignored the large painting of Mt Everest underneath the alter cross and the fact there were no chairs. So we sat down on the floor, at the back, after beating away about 5 ushers who all thought the foreigners really should have pride of place at the front, even tho they knew no one in the church. The groom and our Nepali teacher sat on a platform at the front along with about 5 Nepali pastors and a couple of musicians. The wedding started without the bride… firstly there was praying (female members of the congregation covered their heads with their scarves) then there was very jolly singing (all done sitting down to ensure maximum pins and needles)… then at last the bride comes down the isle on the arm of her sister (?) and was wearing a most glorious satin white wedding dress – think very white, very shiny, very over the top, the bridesmaid also wore a white dress. It was weird they wore white as here it is the colour of death so kind of an odd wedding colour choice – although perhaps they saw ‘4 weddings and a funeral’ on star movie channel? After the bride had reached the stage and sat down in a chair her father wandered down the isle on his own, and then handed her over to the groom. All the time about 8 Nepali men with a range of photographic equipment (huge TV style video cameras, mobile phones, digital cameras, 35mm film cameras) rushed around recording and photographing every single exciting moment. Half the time you couldn’t even see the bride and groom as they were surrounded by a mass of cameramen! When you could see the bride she looked as if she had a cricked neck. Not once did she look up from her shoes, not during the 17 sermons (it was a long wedding), not when saying the vows to her husband to be, not when he lifted the veil from her face, and not when they walked back down the isle and out of the church to their dhal bhat (lentil and rice – traditional Nepali food) reception. I found this interesting as she didn’t smile either. Seriously, looking as if you want to top yourself isn’t a look people go for in weddings at home. However apparently here, if she looked even a little bit happy it would be ultimate disrespect to her family. The bride is supposed to look terribly sad that she must leave her family and join her new husband’s family, and so showing signs of pleasure at getting married is a big NO-NO. Sometimes city life is so westernised I actually find myself surprised by cultural differences – although this probably has something to do with the fact that after a while you are no longer surprised by many things that would surprise you if you just stepped off the plane from London.
Later that evening (about 10pm) a Hindu Nepali wedding party/procession set off from my street with much playing of trumpets, banging of drums and singing. 10pm would seem an odd time to start a wedding however the timing of strict Hindu weddings is decreed by an astrologer who works out the correct time based on details about birth-dates/times of the bride and groom. Apparently 10pm isn’t actually too bad a time, some weddings start in the middle of the night at 2 or 3am. Not sure ill be volunteering to go to any of those ones!
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