Friday, February 27, 2009

Jaipur - Wedding preparations

I arrived late on 11th February in Jaipur and Sankalp & Nidhi picked me up at the bus stop. Before we went home, we stopped by the Ganesh temple.

On the next morning, the wedding preparation ceremonies started। Everyday we had a puja (religious ceremony) in the house and a priest was coming to recite the prayers and make the offerings.



During all these days, I got to know Sankalp´s big family very well, each day more people were coming to the house to greet the family and eat with them. Nearly all the time, there were Dimpy and Kittu (his cousins from Kota) with whom I spent a lot of time. We also went shopping and eating together and they helped me to understand all the traditions and functions.



One day, we had a Mendi party and all the women got henna painted on their hands and arms. For hours we were handicaped as we had to wait for it to dry before we could remove the crust.
But the results were lovely:



In the evenings, there came a dance instructor/ choreographer to the house that got more colorful from day to day by lights and flowers. Also a lot of friends from Sankalp and his brother Utkarsh filled the house and practicing their dances for the Ladies' Sangeet. It was like in a Bollywood movie and so we danced to songs from favorite movies as Slumdog Millionaire (Ringa Ringa), Dostana (Desi Girls), Bunty aur Babli (Kajra re) and many more.


Ringa Ringa

Dimpy, Kitta and me did together a dance to Fashion Nu supported by three of the Desi Girls whose song passed into ours. Even our appearance was only for some 90 seconds, it seemed to me that it was one of the most difficult dances. So the three of us also continued to practice during daytime with the help of this vid and several others.


Fashion Nu

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