Pictures: Our Cosy Little Indian Wedding

Because big fat Indian weddings are so last season.

These are sneak-shots of a much photographed and videographed three-day traditional Bengali wedding of my oldest friend of all times, R, and his darling partner of six years, A.

That’s right. THREE days. Man, us Bengalis, we do nothing by half measures. If he hunt, we hunt elephants. If we rob, we rob the royal treasury. (Or so we’d like to believe, anyway, as we recline after our massive Sunday lunch and absently pat our rotund bellies.)

These shots are from the first half of Day One, which has just been concluded. Bengali weddings, unlike most weddings everywhere, happen late at night (or at least after sundown), which leaves us with a morning to fill with various fun rituals, like caking the bride and groom’s bodies with pasted turmeric and mustard oil. Yes, that, in this cold and inside unheated Indian brick-and-cement rooms. I’m sure the turmeric does wonders for the skin — and disinfects the body thoroughly before presenting it to another person for love and cherishment — but if someone approached ME early one winter’s morning with a bowl of cold, wet turmeric paste floating in colder oil, I’d have brought it crashing down on said person’s heads, locked my room, and gone off to sleep under my fluffu duvet. R and A are very brave people. I applaud them loudly (and from a distance).

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