More to look at.

Here's the promised shot of me in a lungi. This is me with the groom, his brother, and lots of little kids from his native village.



This is the Sharavathi river seen from where one of its ferries docks.



What seems like Main St. in a small village near Kodai, up in the mountains of Tamil Nadu.



Another awesome ad for the Mysore bonesetters. The guy on the right is Shah Rukh Kahn, a famous Bollywood actor.



The mountains surrounding Kodai as seen from its youth hostel.



This guy was sort of a hipster. Notice the black button-up shirt, slim jeans and white belt. He worked at a print shop in the same mall as the bone setters.

Back.

I'm back in the US now. I'm visiting some friends in New York at the moment. This city used to seem crowded and dirty to me. Not anymore.

Here's the rest of the story of the wedding:

After the main ceremony at the wedding hall, the groom invited me to his hometown. I got on a crowded minibus with a bunch of his family and rode an hour inland to a small village called Gerusoppa in the middle of the jungle. We were able to drive right into the village, but coming from certain directions, the only way in is via a ferry across the Sharavathi River.



The groom's teenage cousin, some of his friends and I hired one of the ferry boats to take us up the river to some temple ruins and grade A jungle swimming.

The travel health clinic I went to before leaving the US suggested I not swim in fresh water. I had ignored a lot of their suggestions about street food and brushing with tap water. I had also been sick about 6 times in the last 3 months.

I held my mouth tightly shut while swimming and prayed that nothing swam up my urethra. I've heard that's a possibility.





Some of the groom's family had been requesting a yoga demonstration since my arrival in the village the night before, but they had also been stuffing me with food so I had been a bit hesitant to do any of the entertaining asanas for fear of contorting myself in some vomit-inducing way. In the middle of some further marriage-related puja-ing, after the swim and before lunch, someone said "You will show us some yoga now!?" and I found myself empty-stomached and thus excuseless. Half the audience of the puja turned their attention to me. I could not deny them. I warmed up with some simple forward folds and then showed off Kurmasana, Urdhva Dhanurasana drop-backs
, and Sirsasana (AKA headstand) to much applause.

Lunch was served in the classic South Indian manner: on banana leaves on the floor. It was delicious and complex enough that I don't want to describe it here because I'm hungry and want to stop writing. But here's a picture!

The wedding.

I'm back in Mysore now after a few days on the coast and in the jungle experiencing several firsts.

Monday night I took my first (in India) air-conditioned bus to Murudeshwar. Overnight buses aren't usually too hot to sleep well on, but they are too loud, bumpy, and windy. The A/C bus took care of all of that with its closed windows and swanky air suspension.

When I arrived in Murudeshwar I called the two of the numbers I was given to contact some of the groom's English-speaking family about accommodations. Both were disconnected so I checked into a muggy room at the RNS Residency, a group of buildings dotting the northern end of the peninsula containing the world's largest statue of Shiva.

Up close the statue appeared to be made out of concrete that had been painted silver. The quality of it and many of the other statues nearby was reminiscent of a miniature golf course, minus the miniature part.



Eventually, I was able to contact the groom through a number he had given me for his non-English speaking uncle. He was in his hometown 20 miles away but was able to set me up with a room in a different hotel. This one was air-conditioned, another first, and I shared it with his cousin and friend. They arrived in the middle of the night after a long, sleepless bus trip. The next morning when they didn't seem interested in any alarms, I started to get a feel for how Indian weddings work.

I had been told that the ceremony was to start at 7 AM, but my roommates didn't even try to wake up until 9:30. We all got dressed and headed for the wedding venue around 10:30. In the main hall hundreds of plastic chairs were being casually filled and vacated by guests that seemed alternately involved in and bored shitless by what was happening on the brightly lit stage. The bride and groom were performing puja after puja, led by an old, shirtless, priestly man in a lungi. There was burning of coconut husks, repetition of prayers, and application of bindis.

After standing around observing this for a bit, I headed downstairs for a catered breakfast of idly and sheera, a sweet dish made with farina. I went back upstairs in time for Muhurta which was at exactly 11:57 AM. This seemed to be the climax of the ceremony and involved throwing rice towards the stage and violent drum beating. And then there was lunch.

Sitting next to me during most of the ceremony was a young boy that had tried to sell me souvenir photos of the Shiva statue on the street the day before. I think he wandered into the wedding hall to cash in on the free meals, but he explained some of the rituals to me, so I didn't out him to anyone.





That's a kurta I'm wearing.

Next time on Sup, India: The bride and I are taken away to the groom's native village in the jungle and I wear a lungi.