Wedding festivities!

Dr. Arshad, CDRS’s medical director, got married this weekend and we were privileged to be honored guests. It was a most amazing event and a wedding unlike any we have ever attended.

Saturday night we had a conflicting engagement, so we missed a lot of the activities, but we arrived at midnight and got there to see a few fireworks and the groom’s family’s flat roofed house, all lit up with little lights looking like some amazing birthday cake since there were lights on the roof too. We were into bed by 0200.

Sunday AM, we were up early to return to the groom’s house to attend a breakfast which was normally only for the men, but due to our ‘honored guest’ status, we were graciously included. The groom looked magnificent in his wedding clothes, complete with turban and golden sequined slippers with curled ends.

Soon after the first photo session we followed the procession of about 50 men as they walked to the bride’s house, about half a mile away. It was a lovely spring morning with the green valleys, plowed fields and snow peaked mountains adding to the whole picture. The women then followed in their colorful shalwar kameezes looking like delicate butterflies as they adeptly walked up and down the steep dirt track in their fancy high heels.

When we arrived at Nighut’s, the bride and first cousin of Dr. Arshad, we were taken off to be sequestered with the women inside the house. The men were served another meal outside and out of sight. The bride was dressed in a most elaborate gown and she seated on a dais by herself on display while about 100 women and children were crammed indoors sitting on the floor and standing on the verandah. It was very hot and we felt that the poor girl would keel over from the heat. Somehow, it was remindful of a bee hive with the queen in the middle, while her drones busied themselves around her.

After about an hour the groom came in and sat beside her, with her father was on her other side. They drank out of a golden cup. She proceeded to sob and cling to her father which apparently is a tradition ‘show’ as well as a display of genuine emotions. After the groom departed the bride was placed into a ‘dolly’, which is a chair covered with a cloth so that she was not visible, and carried back to her new home. As per the tradition in Pakistan, the bride moves into the groom’s family’s house.

We walked back to the house with a bevy of women and then enjoyed the company of children and a few women on the verandah as breezes kept us cool while our hands were hennaed (mandee) with amazing designs.

Meanwhile, the men were all being served another meal on the roof of the house while most of the women were once again sitting inside the house on the floor. Men were doing the cooking outside in huge cauldrons over fires. Before we ate lunch we visited the bride (still dressed in her gown) who was sitting on her new bed surrounded by her close friends and sisters. At 3:00 we were served a delicious lunch with the rest of the CDRS female staff, sitting cross legged around a tablecloth on the floor. At 4:00 we said our ‘goodbyes and thank yous’ (allah hafiz and meherbani), reconvened with the men and piled into a jeep and drove back to CDRS.

Tomorrow we head off for 5 days to another remote area where there have been as yet no women health care professionals. There will be no internet access. We cannot believe our time here is rapidly coming to a close. Kashmir is certainly in our hearts.

We wish you all peace. Helen & Judy