One more wedding

Yes, we were invited to another wedding. Except this time, it wasn’t an actual wedding, it was the reception, a chance for everyone to see the bride and groom. The reception took place in Cuttack, which is about an hour’s drive from Bhubaneswar, so we had to leave at 7:30 in order to reach in time. When we entered, we met the bride and the groom, who were sitting at the front of the room in two throne-like chairs. The bride was again decked in traditional Indian clothes, wearing an orange sari and decked in at least three kilograms of gold. She had gold everywhere from her hair and nose ring to her ankles, where thick gold anklets were wrapped around her ankles. After taking pictures with them, we went to do pranam to all the relatives, many of who we hadn’t seen before. During this time, we were introduced to three girls, ages 19, 16, and 10. They were my father’s cousins, meaning that they were my aunts. I had never had an aunt that was younger than me, so it was a new experience.
We started talking about school and college, which was the first topic in almost conversations (seriously, after introducing who you were, the first question most would ask would be, “What grade are you in?”) We conversed in English, as they had gone to an English-medium school as opposed to an Oriya-medium school (meaning that they were instructed in English rather than in Oriya) and were quite fluent in English. During dinner (which was quite delicious), they bombarded me with questions about life in the US. They asked about our “night life,” to which I promptly responded that I had none, seeing as I didn’t live in a city, and they asked about Prom and school dances (which don’t exist in India), and other things that kids in America take for granted but which don’t exist in other places. There were many differences in our two cultures, but that’s not to say that there weren’t any similarities. Taylor Swift and her songs were one of the similarities that existed, and by the end of the night, we had exchanged emails, promising to keep in touch. All three girls desperately wanted to visit America, but knew they couldn’t until they had finished college. It’s times like these where you realize how lucky you are to be living in America, the land of many, many opportunities.