The Surrender Project: Day 21: An Indian Wedding

It is definitely nearing time to leave Jaipur because every time I sit down to write this blog it takes me a minute to remember which morning was which because they are all so similar. This is not a bad thing in general, but it isn’t actively serving my purpose of seeking uncomfortable situations and challenges as I go through the surrender project. I am going to skip most of the routine part again for the reason that the only thing outside of my reading, writing, and mediation that was different was that I didn’t start the day with a mediation, but we will get into that later.

Around 4:30 I called my friend to see what the plan was for meeting up and getting ready for the wedding. It was also around this time that I finished my blog and the other things I was working on from the day. He said he was on business in my area and would stop by to talk in 10 minutes. Before long he showed up, him and his friend again, so all three of us hopped on the scooter to go get some chai and talk about the plan. Now, we never really talked about the plan and I was feeling a bit anxious as I wasn’t in a mental state that was ready to go to a wedding. I wasn’t entirely sure what the mental state I was feeling was though, so we went and got chai and then some food after, as I mentioned I was hungry and needed to eat. This is a common thing for me, if I notice I am anxious about something or feel off a lot of the times it has to do with just being hungry. Or maybe the hunger just provides an awareness of these feelings that are right below the surface in the first place. In this case I believe the latter is true but there are times when anxiety or worry only has to do with being hungry. Anyway, I think my friend can tell I am a bit out of it, as I am not speaking much and just sort of staring off into space. He drops me off after food and tells me the plan is to meet at a certain spot at 7:30 and go to the wedding from there. It was wild the sense of relief I felt at the knowledge that I would get 2.5 hours of alone time before heading to the wedding. Even after the food this feeling wasn’t going away, in fact it was seemingly getting a bit stronger. I was feeling a bit down in the dumps and headed up to my room to do a meditation to try and clear the thoughts and get out of this state, even if I wasn’t entirety sure what it was. However, as soon as I sat down on my bed I realized that I am not supposed to just breathe out of this and let it go away, but practice my own preachings and sit with it for a bit. So, I sat on my bed in my dingy room and just felt the feelings. Now, I enjoy the room I am staying in, the first time having my own space in I cannot even say how long. But it isn’t exactly luxury and would probably be an immediate “no chance” to most people. The walls and ceiling are covered in mold spots, the paint is flaking off of water-damaged spots all over the place, there are two not-so-small holes in the wall that have never been fixed, the only light is a fluorescent tube that shimmers with no cover on one wall, the pillowcase is half ripped revealing a yellow and stained pillow underneath, the blankets probably are not washed between users and there are a few spots of filth on them, the sheets have holes in them, and overall it just isn’t exactly cozy. Now, for $4 a night I am not complaining, but if this was my first destination after leaving the U.S. I would be grossed out, as I am sure most of you are reading this. The reason I point all of this out was because it definitely doesn’t help the feeling that I soon discovered I was dealing with. I am pretty sure it is what we call loneliness. So here I am sitting on my bed leaning against one of the moldy walls, really looking at the state of the room I had been living in for the past week and feeling really alone. I just allowed myself to sit there, staring at the shimmering fluorescent light, in my own little self pity of loneliness for a while. I thought about my friends, that the simple act of getting together for a beer and some laughs sounded like a dream. I thought about a lot of things I could list here, but I am just going to focus on the parts worth sharing, not relive my loneliness. When you are in a state of feeling down, whether it is sadness or anxiety or anything like that, it is crazy the different ways your mind will look at a situation. Take for example the BBQ from the other night. When I got home that night I was elated and overall stoked that I got to experience something such as that. But when I am sitting in sadness I instead think, did I even enjoy that? What is even so cool about having a BBQ with strangers in India? You start to look at things in a worse light. Some of this is going to sound kinda sad and weird, but that hasn’t stopped me before so I am just going to share it honestly. I thought to myself when was the last time I was genuinely laughing, like not just a giggle but a deep belly laugh? I had to sit and think for a while, unsure if I have had experiences in India at all that make me really laugh. That I do have these friends here that I have been hanging out with, but they are a drastically different type of friendship than my friends who I love back home. I felt down, I felt sad, I felt so alone, and I had no idea what I was going to do next. It is a bit of a paradox to sit and feel your sadness because in a sense it feels good. It feels good to feel bad and down and recognize it, but obviously it is sadness so being sad doesn’t feel good in and of itself. The good part comes in just sitting in it and feeling the feels. I sat in it for a while, at one point just closing my eyes and thinking about what life looks like back home. Of walking into a specific friend’s house on Sunday morning to say hi and make myself an espresso before we talk about the books we are reading or play some new music that we think the other might like, or our business ideas to escape this trap of a career. I crave spontaneous forms of community, of sending a text to a group chat that I am making tacos tonight and if you want to come to just show up with ingredients for margaritas and some guacamole. I think I am realizing how much I miss just being in the presence of people I truly love. Maybe not even that, maybe it is just life showing me how important these people are to me in the first place and to not take their presence for granted when I return home. I was also a little bit proud of being able to just sit in the sadness for a bit, and realized this is exactly the stuff I have been saying I want to experience during my travels. That yeah, I haven’t been laughing a ton, but I have had moments of crazy realizations or butterflies for the gift to be able to experience the things I am. That this specific chapter isn’t about maxing out on “fun”, but to learn more and experience life in a different way than I ever have before. If I wanted laughter and fun only, I could go back to the island life in southern Thailand and party with Europeans and Americans. But I am choosing to seek a different adventure right now, one that comes with loneliness and other feelings I am not too experienced with. So in my sadness I had that realization that this is the challenging stuff I wanted to experience, even if just for a short time because who wants to be sad all the time? It also makes me question why I am even seeking these experiences out in the first place. Something that I think is a positive reflection to have on our lives at any time, to question why we are doing the things we are doing to make sure that they align with the direction we want to go. My answer right now is because I feel like I am being called to it. That each step in the last year and a half of my life seems to be pushing me to this point to be able to dive into the unknown and learn from it. I do not have a deeper reasoning as to why I am being drawn to it. I think that answer is found in the everyday of what my life is right now. Partly the ability to write and reflect on my thoughts every day and grow in all the ways that it is presenting. Partly more things to uncover as I live through the next couple months of this journey. It is similar to what I wrote about the other day, that I do not think there is going to be some massive answer I come to when my travels are over. But that the answer lies in the experiences that I am having because of seeking out some answer in the first place. It is like what Viktor Frankl talks about in Man’s Search For Meaning, that we are not seeking something from life, but life is seeking something from us, and the answer is in the journey of that question. So, nothing but to keep going on that journey as long as it is calling me in. Because there will be a time when I feel called and ready to go home, and the next chapter of discovery and learning will start. I absolutely love this way of thinking about life, as a never ending quest where we pick up little answers and discoveries along the way that completely change us. It keeps it so exciting and full of curiosity, that the answer is only in the now and fully experiencing what we are right now, to stop seeking that final answer so much we get too far ahead of all the little answers themselves. Annnnd here we go again, back to the theme of presence. Shocking.

I eventually opened my eyes back up after sitting and thinking through everything I just shared above. I realized it had been an hour and a half of me just sitting there in my thoughts. Never checking my phone or listening to music. Just thoughts. I then sat for another 30 minutes in a meditation, trying to let go of some of these feelings of sadness and ground myself in where I was right now. It worked quite well, the theory of feeling and then releasing is off to a strong start. I also realized something after the meditation as I was starting to get ready. That I sat down and just thought for basically two hours. How often do we do that? No seriously, think to yourself when was the last time you did nothing but just sit and think through or about something? Besides the sleeper buses where I would just lay there and think. I cannot recall the last time I spent two hours intentionally feeling an emotion and thinking through it, or just two hours in my mind without distraction. Maybe it is just me, but I have a feeling it isn’t. I think back to my life when I was working an 8-5 job and everything else. When did I just stop and think? Honestly? I do not think I stopped and just thought for 2 hours straight a single time in those years of life. Like it isn’t something that we do as people because realistically who has two hours to just do nothing but sit and think? If you do spend that amount of time thinking, ignore this. But I realized how much better I felt after it. That I went through a pretty strong feeling of loneliness and sadness in less than two hours, as opposed to feeling it nagging at me for days and days and just letting it consume me. Instead of making it go away temporarily by swiping social media or distracting my mind in other ways, I just sat with it and worked through it. Yeah, the sitting with it part probably made it more intense for a bit, but then I was able to work through it. I say this as somebody who has never really done this before, not as an expert in the matter. If you can feel the energy and excitement in my words right now that’s because I am blown away at this whole situation. For one it is wild to me how we so rarely make time for ourselves without outside distraction. And two, how well and overall positive the experience of sitting with it was. This doesn’t cure my sadness for life obviously, and I didn’t mean for this to be a blog on how to handle emotions, but I am overall proud of how this situation went as a whole.

I didn’t leave myself a ton of time to get ready for the wedding, but did get ready in time and ordered an Uber motorbike to the meet spot, costing me about a quarter. In my head I had assumed that we were going to go directly to the wedding, as it was already 7:30. That evidently was not the plan as I meet up with the two guys and we drop off one at his house and then my friend and I head to his house. We drink chai and talk, obviously in no rush as he slowly takes his time getting his outfit. Around 9:00 or so we head out, but only to go to the barber shop to style his hair and get a face wash. My hair is sorta tricky at times, it is its best when it dries naturally coming out of the ocean. I try to tell my friend that, that I do not need anything done to it and trying to gel and style it will probably fuck it up. He then tells me I can get a face wash for free because the owner wants to make a video of him taking care of an American, because he has never had one in his shop before and thinks it will make him famous. I think why not, it is going to be more memorable if I lean into this experience and just go with the flow. The face wash is quite nice actually, and he scrubs every inch of my face in a variety of ways that leaves me relaxed and feeling good (see Instagram). After the face wash, he decides to tackle my hair, which isn’t in the best condition it has ever been in to say the least. A combination of the water quality, me choosing not to shampoo it, and the dirtiness of everything here, it is a bit of a nest. He sprays my hair with some water while giving his best nonchalant “blue steel” into his employee who is filming him. Yeah, I am not joking, he was actively looking into the camera with a posed face as he attempts to brush my hair which is basically dry. He then starts blowdrying it as he is brushing it, and it is going to shit fast. Then somebody else takes over after he got his model shot in. He keeps blowdrying it and is now combing all of the hair on my head to one side. Like a full on FULL head combover. I think he must just be setting up for the next step when he stops and says he is done. I stifle a laugh into a cough as I ask my friend if he is serious. All this process did was completely take away all of my curls, provide an enormous amount of volume, and make me look like I got into a fight with a leaf blower and lost… horrendously lost. Then the owner comes back over and we pose for pictures as we pretend we are shaking hands. Like dude! Do you see my hair right now?! I cannot even think of a person who has ever styled their hair in this way so I cannot draw any examples to this. I look like I tried to dress up as Albert Einstein for halloween and play off the crazy hair thing, but got struck by lightning on the way to the party. After that fiasco we hop on the moped and drive 10 kilometers to the wedding. Which also seems a bit of an odd thing, to style your hair professionally and then get onto an open aired vehicle where the wind is dismantling everything that my hair was. I do not think much of it, but before long I use one of my bracelets to tie it up as I do not look great with the frizzy and straight hair combo.

Into the wedding we go, down an elaborate hallway with flowers and statues and out into a massive field of people with tents, tables, and a few other decorations scattered around. It doesn’t take long to realize it is only men, so I ask my friend where the women are. He points to the other side of a wall, where the women have their own party and food. What a wild thought to separate the men and women during a wedding… I see quite quickly that weddings are drastically different in the States. It is also important to point out that this is a muslim wedding, and that it is probably different than a Hindu wedding, not all Indian weddings are the same. There are about 5,000 people scattered around this one. And I quickly see that food is the number one objective of the men, as at least half are packed around tables giving out the food. Now, the food distribution method shocked me as we made our way to try some fried chicken. The cooks couldn’t keep up with demand, so upon brining forth a new batch, they would hand place them onto plates. This lead to a frenzy to stick out your plate as you push your way to the front, hoping the man giving out helping happened to put the handful of chicken onto your plate. My height and whiteness proved quickly to be an advantage, as the servers would go out of their way to serve the foreigner. This was WILD though. Like imagine being at a wedding a 20 men are bodying their way to get to the last few pieces of fried chicken?! This was also evident in the drinks line as well to get juice. Then, instead of going to a table, we all just eat as fast as we can standing up in a circle, using our hands of course. We were done eating the entire meal within 10 minutes, and Frankly I wasn’t sure what else we were going to do. It was a bit weird if I am being completely honest. There was no music ever being played, there was no dancing, there was no “party” aspect to it. We ate, then stood and walked around to say hi to their friends and sit in conversation. There was a part where we went to take some pictures, and I ended up taking pictures with random Indian men for the better part of half an hour. The photo thing is huge, and I found myself getting grabbed into groups of men to be apart of their photos multiple times. One thing that struck me as off was that the groom didn’t show up until midnight, where he sat in a specific part only surrounded by family as he went through another hour of the actual wedlock ceremony, without his soon to be wife. I never saw the bride, only the groom for the time he was sitting there in rituals. After he was done, around 1:00 am, he went and ate dinner with the close friends and family. By close friends and family I mean only the men. I guess the only time he sees his bride on the wedding is when they leave, which must be late as we left at 1:30 am or so and it didn’t seem like he was done eating yet. What a wild circumstance to be apart of honestly. Out of the 5,000 or so guests only about 20-30 every interact with the groom in anyway. Everybody else is just there to eat and maybe see some other friends they know and talk a bit. What struck me as odd was how the guys talked about what a fun evening it was afterwards. Even if the majority of conversation was brief and we just stood there just not talking for the vast majority of the time. I mean wow, it was an amazing experience to be able to go through it and see a culture celebrate a wedding in the way that they do. Just so far from what I was anticipating it to be. Overall yes, it was a fun evening with jokes from friends and seeing a lot of people, but the no music, no dancing, no alcohol (obviously) part of it felt different than what I was expecting. I guess now I need to find a way to get invited to a Hindu wedding to see the differences! I should also note, there are three days to a wedding and I do not have the details as to what the other two entail.

After the wedding we rode home, about 30 minutes on the back of a moped. I was exhausted and didn’t say a whole lot, just sat and enjoyed the ride back. It was pretty cool to see the city of Jaipur at 2:00 am with all the shops closed and nobody else on the streets. A place during the day time that is bustling with nonstop commotion, yet everything gets packed up and put away for a few hours before the streets heat back up again with people. Not everything goes to bed at 2:00 am however. The cows seemed to multiply at night, munching on piles of garbage that litter the streets. It is quite odd, driving through areas where there is absolutely not a speck of grass, yet passing 20-30 cows and all they eat is garbage that people carelessly throw anywhere and everywhere. It is a weird phenomena. Have you ever been out late at night somewhere, maybe a big city, maybe just any city or downtown area, and there is that specific energy in the air? The one that feels cozy in a sense, yet seems to amplify your thoughts and dreams for life? Like anything feels possible at 2:00 am or 3:00 am when you’re in a deserted area that is normally packed with people. Something about it makes me want to have deep conversations about life and the future. Maybe I am just relating it to climbing on top of our high school roof late at night to talk about what life was going to look like after we graduated. That feeling of so much potential sitting on your outstretched fingertips. Maybe I am just going off on a random point nobody understands, but it is always a special feeling that comes along with it. My point being, it was special driving on a moped down these streets in the cool weather, not seeing anybody else but cows and stray dogs, seeing the city in a completely different light. There isn’t much more to add than that, just wanted to see if I could describe that feeling at night. It does add to an interesting evening getting into that same bed with the thoughts that the night were bringing. They were peaceful, maybe a bit dreamy, but they were a good cap off to an eventful evening, one I likely will never forget.