Wedding

The wedding took place outdoors that evening. We arrived after 9pm, and the groom's party arrived at 11pm, no joke, apparently because they were in a stalemate with Neha's father, because he had not provided alcohol at the wedding venue. He finally sent along some bottles of scotch. No one seemed very offended or visibly disturbed by this.
However, at the entrance, when the groom was negotiating with the ladies to come in (another tradition), a nearby wedding presented a very good fireworks display, so it seemingly looked like the groom was arriving with every kind of bells and whistles. A wedding band (sounded like the Stanford Marching Band….for real) blared their tunes behind the groom’s party.
That outdoor wedding venue had lavish everything: food stalls--appetizers in one section, dinner selections in another section joined by a walkway, video screens, seats, dancing floor, and marriage platform. But the bathrooms were smelly and dirty; I also had to squat for the first time in India that night, amazingly successful in keeping my nice suit filth-free. When I emerged from the harrowing bathroom experience, I saw the place where they washed and handled dishes: outdoors in the open. The dirty dishes were placed in a huge vat filled a water that looked like prune juice…..which functioned as the DISHWATER. Other people’s food and mess served as the soap. The “clean” dishes were stacked neatly on a blanket rolled out on the dusty ground. I felt dazed and unsettled and as I slowly moved back to the wedding area, I blinked to keep my eyes from bugging out, which helped me to remove the expression of horror from my face. Before midnight, Nav and I prepared to eat dinner, and I was nervous. My first glance at the plates confirmed my fear that they had passed through the vat. Some of the brown residue coated the plate in smears. I improvised a solution: I squirted my purell hand sanitizer in swirls right on our plates, and our spoons, and wiped (and wiped) them clean with a napkin. I felt eternal gratitude for the sanitizer; it allowed us to enjoy some of the food. We left around 1am, after we ushered the bride in among a shower of marigolds and witnessed the brief (wow) ceremony where the couple exchanged white garlands.