Moment:
Thursday, October 17th at 6:22 PM IST
"You don't really get to see banana hands in Hyderabad"
"Banana what??"
"Today I found out a cluster of bananas is called a hand, and a single banana is a finger."
I traveled to Vijayawada for my cousin Jarusha’s wedding, and fortunately I was able to arrive a couple days to take part in the events leading up to the wedding. In most Telugu weddings, the bride is prepared for the wedding in a ceremony called the pellikuthuru. This tradition is carried out by families in the bride’s home and groom’s home respectively, in which close family members smear them with oil and turmeric to help make them radiant on their wedding day. They then take a bath and emerge in new clothes, after which they are not to leave the house until the wedding ceremony.
Through this whole ceremony, a younger female relative called the thodupellikuthuru (literally translated to “with the bride”) sits next to the bride, and when relatives apply the paste and sprinkle flowers on the bride, they do the same for her. My cousin’s six-year-old daughter Princy was the thodupellikuthuru, which was the role Jarusha Akka, the bride, played when my parents were getting married.
My cousin’s pellikuthuru took place on Friday, a day before her wedding, so we spent Thursday getting ready for dozens of our family members to arrive for the special occasion. We started by preparing bundles of bananas and betel leaves to give to relatives.
I had never seen bananas on the branch like that before, just on the tree or in bunches at the grocery store. An aunty methodically cut the bananas off the branch as I held it, then we wrapped two bananas each in a betel leaf. Both bananas and betel leaves are symbols of prosperity, so they are gifted to relatives to thank them for their well wishes.
We then all got our mehndi (or henna) done by the bride’s friends. Mehndi is probably one of the most well-known and widespread Indian tradition for a number of occasions, but for weddings, it has a special significance for the bride. Henna is applied to adorn the bride’s hands and feet because in Ayurvedic medicine, henna leaves are believed to have cooling properties, which serves relieving the bride of any stress before her big day.
There are a lot of traditions associated with bridal mehndi that differ between cultures and families. Some bridal henna artists hide the initials of the groom in the design as a fun twist on “Where’s Waldo?” and a tradition that one of my elementary school teachers upheld is that a bride does not have to do any work in or out of the house until her henna fades. Since henna can last up to three weeks if you’re careful, that sounds like a pretty sweet deal!
On the day of the pellikuthuru, we all gathered around the bride and thodupellikuthuru to let the ceremonies commence. My aunts, uncles, cousins, and even my 84-year-old great-aunt, took turns applying the turmeric mixture on their faces. Only married people are supposed to apply the paste on them, so I kind of just stood next to my cousin Nirosha as she applied it instead. I guess I looked really awkward, so the photographer told me to pose for a picture while pretending to do something (which resulted in this picture).
After they came back in new (and turmeric-free!) clothes, we all had lunch together, spending time to take pictures and just catch up. I got to hear a lot of their little anecdotes about my parents and grandparents (everyone said I’m a “picture” of my mom), and it was a beautiful time. All 20-something of us stayed at my uncle’s flats that night, which I thought was something that only happened in the movies, because living in America, I don’t really get to experience the level of kinship with my extended family that those still in India do, since even my first cousins live about a 4-hour flight away from us. I have not seen many of these relatives in years, and some I had never even met before except on social media, but I immediately felt at home.
We all stayed up together tying jasmine flowers and commissioning hilarious portraits drawn by one of my younger cousins. With the wedding being the next morning, we thought we were too excited to sleep, but I guess the day of festivities took a lot more out of me than I realized, and I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. Part 2 of this blog post: the big day!
