Wedding, Two Flat Tires, and Finally in Mussoorie

Well, a lot has happened since my last post.  The most exciting thing: I am married!  Last Friday when the rest of the group took a night train from Delhi to Mussoorie, my then-fiancé and I took a night train to Aligarh, where our wedding took place.  The train ride, which was supposed to take two-and-a-half  hours, ended up taking about four.  That delay was only a preview of the events to come later in the weekend.

Receiving blessings from our parents and stand-in parents.

(L to R: My friend Shobhitha’s Aunt and mother; my mother-in-law; Robert; John; my father-in-
law)

Our extremely last-minute wedding preparations (including having my wedding sari blouse fitted and sewn) began Saturday morning and didn’t stop until Sunday morning.  Around noon my then-fiancé returned to his home village to perform some pre-wedding rituals.  In true Indian fashion, even our wedding began later than scheduled, about six hours later.

One thing that puzzles me about India is the utter fascination with anything American.  Specifically, at our wedding, one of the drummers was wearing a t-shirt that sported the Playboy bunny logo, and one girl was wearing a shirt that said “Damn” something or another.  My first reaction was, Why in the world would they wear something like this to our wedding?!  But my more rational analysis was that people are so fascinated with anything American that they wear “American” clothing even if they do not understand it.  I guess it’s no different than thinking that Arabic script or Japanese characters are beautiful, only to find out later that the words you were admiring were something obscene.  Anyway, I am confident that neither of these persons would have been wearing this clothing had they known what it really meant.

We had planned to join the rest of the ETA’s on Monday morning for our first day of intensive Hindi classes at Landour Language School in the Himalayas.  Our plan was to take a Sunday night train from Aligarh to Dehradun, and a taxi from there to Mussoorie, but our train was canceled due to a fatal accident that occurred earlier that day.  Disheartened by the tragedy but glad for the time to get some much-needed sleep, we ended up taking a taxi from Aligarh to Dehradun, and then to Mussoorie, on Monday.

Two canceled train tickets, twelve hours in a taxi, and two flat tires later, we finally reached our destination – 7,000 feet above sea level at a guest house in the Himalayas.  We slept quickly, woke up Tuesday morning for a quick breakfast, and made the five-minute walk from our guest house* to Landour Language School.

So far the Hindi classes have been fantastic.  The intensity of this three-week course is exactly what I was hoping it would be.  The classes for the ETA’s are five days a week for about four hours a day.  We finish around noon, so we have the entire afternoon to ourselves (and study, of course).  My husband and I walk to the language school together each morning, and while I am in classes, he works on his PhD research in one of the common areas there.  So far it’s working out okay for both of us.

We haven’t had much opportunity to enjoy the free afternoons yet, however, as I have come down with an upper respiratory infection (i.e. a really persistent head cold).  I guess the altitude and the rain will do that to a person.  To be sure, several of my fellow ETA’s and other Americans staying at our guest house have come down with colds as well.  Which brings me to my next post, about medical care in India.

*My husband and I stayed at a different guest house than the rest of the ETAs; their walk was much longer and steeper than ours.  I am sure you can read about it in some of their blogs.