Above:The Baha'i House of Worship of Asia. Below:Life and times of your fellow World Citizen, Kolya

On my second day in Delhi I went to a wedding! Actually, it was a double wedding! The ceremony was held after the ancient Vedic fashion. My father knows the bride and her brother was also getting married at the same time! I went with my dad only because my mum had a big headache, that day. The Bride had been a teacher or student or otherwise been in contact with the Goethe Institute (known in India as the Max Mueller Bhavan), where my dad works, and through them had been helped to go to Germany, which is where she met her now-husband, who is a German. At the same time her brother got married. The grooms and all the men of the close family wore turbans and Indian clothes and the women wore beautiful wedding-saris. First, there was a welcoming ceremony and then a photo opportunity and then the main ceremony was indoors, around a ceremonial fire (ceremonial but a real fire).

I didn’t spend the whole time watching the ceremony, because an Indian marriage is very much a social event and because much to my surprise I found a family with whom I could practice my Chinese a bit! The father works at the Embassy, in the educational office, the mother had just arrived in Delhi and couldn’t speak English, and their daughter was also in Delhi and has just started studying at a University here in the field of computers.
The ceremony lasted an hour and a half or so, afterwards there was a large buffet banquet. The food was good but we were getting tired and not even the army band (the Bride’s father is a retired officer) was enough to keep us there longer. It was interesting to experience, though; much more complicated than the simple Baha’i wedding I went to a year or two ago. Since, all a Baha’i wedding usually involves is some prayers and perhaps music and the short wedding vow. But don’t misunderstand, the Vedic wedding was also very nice!