Balaranjith Weds Romila

We had an opportunity to attend the wedding of one of Jay’s work colleagues, Ranjith. This wedding between Ranjith (also known as Bala) and Romila took place in the small port town of Tuticorin in the southeast state of Tamil Nadu, with another reception the following day in Trivandrum (Thiruvanantapuram) in the southwest state of Kerala. Reflecting centuries of western contact with southern India, the wedding was a Christian affair.

After a flight from Bangalore to Madurai the previous evening, we got a very early start on our drive to Tuticorin with instructions to our driver to “get us to the church on time.”

We arrived at St. Patrick’s Church in Tuticorin with sufficient time to mingle with other invited guests, but no one was at the church. A kindly priest intervened and instructed a church guard to walk us to the nearby home of one of the relatives. We were very warmly greeted and chatted briefly. The ladies at the house honored Helen by pinning a small garland of jasmine to her hair. The time of the wedding was approaching. Shouldn’t we all be assembling at the church? Oh, we still have so much to learn.

With great kindness shown to our confusion, we were ushered into an Indian-built Ambassador car and driven to a marriage hall where the first of two ceremonies of the day was underway.

We arrived shortly after a procession of relatives had greeted the newlyweds. There was still much pomp, ceremony, relative-mingling and endless picture taking to come. We were warmly received by Ranjith’s mom and dad as was another honored guest, Philip Bratten, who had traveled from Pittsburgh to attend. We chatted with relatives and had our photo taken with Ranjith’s grandmother, the oldest attendee. Dr. Sundararaj, the father-in-law of one of Ranjith’s brothers, was our guide for the day.

At the appointed time, the groom departed amid the sounds of a marching band! This wedding, in true Indian style, was groom oriented. Lead by the marching band, a procession of cars that individually contained the groom and bride and their attendants meandered its way to the church.

Although the service and hymns at. St. Patrick’s were in Tamil, we generally understood the order of events. There was no ring exchange. Rather, Ranjith presented Romila with an absolutely beautiful gold necklace with a large, custom-made medallion with a cross and their initials on it. The civil ceremony of signing the marriage registry followed.

It was back to the marriage hall where there was more dancing, music, giving of gifts and more picture taking. As the long line of relatives queued to present gifts, family youngsters provided dance entertainment from lame Bollywood gyrations to well-practiced folk traditions. We presented our gift and had our picture taken with the bride and groom. We ate our meal served on a banana leaf, then thanked our hosts for their marvelous hospitality. We got back in the car with instructions to our driver to get us to Kanyakumari at the very southern tip of India in time to catch the evening sunset.