We went to a wedding
which
turned out to be as preposterous as one might have imagined.
The night before we had taken Granny over to her 2nd daughter’s house and then gone on to her son’s house, both about 15 miles away and where she used to live 30 years ago with husband 1..(My piece on dysfunctional families forthcoming)…..where a ragged assembly of fat women in their late 30s/early 40s and orange T shirts, and an equally disreputable, or so I thought, collection of middle aged drunkards were busy feeding their faces and dancing to the most appalling and loud karaoke.
We survived this for an hour or two, while Elodie grooved around the place and wanted to do not much more than dance.
The bride is the daughter of the son’s wife’s elder sister; ie his niece!. This is the son of whose adventure in Taiwan you may have read
6.00 am next morning, we have to pole up for the real thing which was a strange mixture of elegance and naff-beautiful flowers and clothes, appalling lurid plastic mats on the floor, endless monkish intonings, which I gathered no-one understands as it is all in Pali!. And are tedious because you are supposed to keep your hands in prayer all the while droning goes on. Anyway there about 250-300 people of whom about 60 are squashed into a room with the bride and groom and the monks. The rest scattered around a big mud floored tree covered compound feeding their faces. On looking inside the room I saw that 9 out of the 10 monks were busy noshing too.
The food, of course, turned out to be symbolic, banana stew because the threads in the bananas bind you together, minced pork-larb for luck, lots of lurid pink and green and yellow little sweets again to bind you.
The couple are dressed in cream-the girl pretty, the boy very dark and his cream suit v. ill fitting. Whenever he comes outside he has trouble with flip flops as he is having to wear socks. He looks very young and totally bemused; but he appears to have a formidable array of older siblings performing various tasks behind him.
Then they bind the couple together with reams of white thread and everyone shuffles forward on knees and pours water from a shell over the hands of the couple.
All this seems to be about the grannies and grandpas making sure that everyone knows they are well and truly married, so difficult to run away later. Their friends only pole up later as you shall see.
Another round of eating is now called for..we have got to about 8.30—all the while outside the karaoke continues-and last nights drunkards are sitting with their feet on crates of beer; what I took to be innocuous little plastic jugs of water on the tables turn out to contain 70% proof white rice whisky.
The chaps turn out to be the kamnan and pu yai baan--provincial and local headmen-the doctor, teacher, policemen…ie the real bees knees-oh and the long distance bus driver—I was not sure about this one so asked K who just rubbed her fingers together..
They were all a bit of a funny shape as they lounged and eventually all was revealed when they started producing an astonishing quantity and variety of firearms from various parts of their persons. All in possession of the latest Nokia WAP video mobiles of course, too, .but with calloused feet and ancient flip flops.
I discovered that Thailand is third highest on the list of hand gun deaths after S.Africa and Colombia.
Bit like my discovery of Tucson being the third highest murder city of the US when I went there!
One spends most of the time in these sorts of groups avoiding getting drunk and telling them you are very old-at least 80..they decide you are 40 and after about two hours they give up asking until someone new joins the group and the same litany of questions starts again. However you tell them you are an ‘ajahn yai’ ie big cheese prof. and they shut quickly! At least no contempt for teachers here! And certainly, no credit transfer.
It is starting to get hot. What are we waiting for now? The magic moment appointed by the monk to get married..oh so we have been going three hours and not got there yet. About 10.00 am another 200 people appear. This is the groom’s family-all present hitherto having been the bride’s! They pole up waving two large banana trees and two large bits of sugar cane-more fertility symbols. They are confronted by the bride’s family carrying a huge tree. This is the first door. The door of wood. After about 10 minutes of bawdy remarks and intricate financial transactions this door is opened with much dancing and inebriation, on to the next door, the door of silver..much more money required, then up the steps to the third door, the door of gold-enough said.
The bride price seems to be about £3000 plus an amazing quantity of gold chains and bracelets-though some of this appears to get given back-with gold at its most expensive for 20 years thanks to Mr. Thaksin and the muslims-this amounts to another £2500-remember average income running at about $3000p.a. -not that one can believe these statistics.
A lot more people pile into the wedding room while the rest start on the food and whisky. The karaoke has been replace by a band, consisting of a drummer, who is ace, a man with a tambourine and a man with a spoon and a beer bottle who make enough noise to set many people dancing and at least keep the karaoke turned down.
The couple’s friends appear, many of them in school uniform. I had already remarked a. that the groom did not appear to have yet encountered a razor, and b. that the bride looked older than K-certainly plumper!.
It turns out, of course, they are both 15.
If they are married they cannot go to school any more, as the school won’t have them, nor will it have pregnant girls, girls who appear in beauty pageants or children who have appeared on TV.
This also explains why mothers in law have been in tears all the time and the fathers aren’t there at all- apparently both are too angry. One supposes, confirmed by K, that the girl must be well and truly pregnant.
By 11.00 everyone is either too stuffed or drunk to do anything. The policeman who is both having not stopped since 6.00 has got more and more gloomy. He is spotted by a gaggle of the orange T Shirted women who start singing bawdy songs at him..Why does he look so sour, why does he not smile, does his wife know where he is, would anyone with a face like that have a wife, she has probably run away??? etc..he attempts a grin and fails, fingers his gun nervously and calls for more beer..
Now even the band is wilting.
The monks depart. Clearly that is it.
