Jen's Travel Journal: Preparing for the wedding in India
Jen and her daughter Nora, as well as our Elementary Guide, Manisha, are visiting India. As you may have read from her newsletter they are there for a wedding and then have plans after to explore and visit several places special to Montessori and her career. She has shared some of the details in preparation for the wedding:
“Manisha’s niece, Sayali, is getting married on Tuesday. So, we have traveled to Nashik, a small city, about three and a half hours’ train ride southeast of Mumbai.
We saw farms of fenugreek, peppers, roses, broad beans, corn, and grapes. It is a high elevation and the air is cool. Small shops line the streets of the central part of the city, where Manisha’s parents live.
There are shops for everything! Manisha bought a blouse for the sari she will wear to one of the ceremonies and we bought fabric and found a tailor to make a blouse for the sari I will wear to the wedding. Color is everywhere... in the produce and flowers lying on fabric on the ground, in the fabric shops, clothing shops, jewelry shops. The pulse of these streets is everything one imagines India to be—fully alive Itself, breathing life into the thousands of us selling and buying and being together.
Saturday, after we arrived, we took a motorized rickshaw to Manisha’s sister’s flat. This was one the sites of a blessings ceremony for Sayali and Saurabh, the Bride and Groom. The other site is Saurabh’s parents house. There are three purposes: First, to give offerings assuring that the marriage has blessings all year round, not just when Sayali’s star sign is strongest; the second is to purify the house; and the third is for the people closest to the couple to give their blessings to the couple and their marriage.
Sayali and her parents make offerings
A fire is lit in a small clay pit. The smoke purifies the house.
(Photo credit: Nora) The women in Sayali’s life gather around a mortar and pestle and a stone grinder to grind turmeric. The turmeric powder will be used in a paste that will be applied to Sayali’s skin the morning of the wedding ceremony, which acts as an antibiotic. This is the way the family offers blessings to Sayali and on the marriage.
