Meetu's wedding at Jaipur

Meetu , my neice decided to marry a Sindhi boy Jitesh from Jaipur, whom she had met in Melbourne where she was working with him and we all landed up in Jaipur for the wedding. It was in the midst of winter and after all the commotion of trying to find the hotel where we had to stay at the mid hour at night, we finally found it. Next day we forgot all our frustrations of the earlier day at getting lost on the way, being tired by the delayed flight and joined the festivities. We had a lot of fun drinking hot cups of tea and Coffee and gossiping with many relatives and friends whom we had not met for ages. In between we also found time to do some sight seeing, shopping and the pink city and all its ancient forts, historical places and palaces stole my heart. I was so sad to hear that recently, this lovely city with all its gentle people also saw a wave of terrorist bombs which left a large number of people dead.

However the marriage in 2005 December was real fun. We had lovely Rajasthani food and since the boys parents were from Jaipur, though we were the brides side we were also like Guests here for we did not know any one among the Guests. Hence we spent all the time talking amongst us brothers and sisters and all the neices and nephews.Neelu and Dr. Pandey were the perfect host. I felt very nostalgic that this was the girl who was born in front of me in Allahabad and I had seen her as a child , a toddler and now she was getting married. Meetu looked a lovely bride in all the bridal jewellery and dress. We all decided to wear the Kumaoni Pichodas, the large chaddor like cover worn over the saree, for the Mehendi rasam and the Pichodas look so beautiful and are so colour ful. Earlier all these would be made at home in a Kumaoni wedding with lots of songs and dance but now unfortunately all this is gone. Though there is a lot of singing and dancing , mostly Bollywood film music and a party the Pichoda is often bought from the market. Still a North Indian wedding is so much of dance and song and fun that I often miss it in the South.