indian engagement

yesterday night, nikhil took me to an indian egagement ceremony. one of his friends from the german classes at university had invited him and said it was no problem for me to come along.

i was very surprised. first, the whole thing rather resembled a party or happy gathering than a ceremony. while the traditional elements of an engeagement were carried out meticulously, the guests catted or took pictures. second - i could have figured - this engagement involved more people than many german weddings:

the engagement ceremony consists of three parts. first, the fiancé's family welcomes and/or accepts the fiancée to the family. as far as i understood, the fiancée undergoes the same ritual for every family member: they touch her forehead, stick something to eat in her mouth, and she finally touches their feet. thus, you will be better off picking a groom with a family that both is small and cares about clean feet (as most indians do)...

during the second part, the fiancée's family passes on the responsibility for their daugther to the fiancé. same subsequence of rituals as aforementioned. these two elements are often more than just an old tradition, since, as in this case, the two families barely know each other if at all. i was told that this was an example for a very modern couple since it was a) a love marriage (as opposed to an arranged one) and b) the caste system did not play any role.

exchanging the engagement rings constitutes the third and last step of the ceremony. as opposed to e.g. german customs, hindu traditions do not repeat the ring exchange at the acutal wedding.

these three steps lasted approximately one hour. the engagement party then moved on to the buffet to eat (in our case: from one side of the room to the other). the students of german obviously could not quite believe the food was not "zu scharf?!" for me at all.

during the ceremony, i also got to chat with one of the professors of the german department at pune university. understanding that she had the prototype of the german business world in front of her, dr acharya invited me to visit their newly established business german course to give a lecture. topic to be determined via e-mail but it will probably deal with something like "what the heck does controlling stand for" or "angela merkel and the economic downturn". they seem to have difficulties finding germans who are capable and willing to do such things. since i always enjoyed having foreign visitors in my french or english classes, i agreed on the spot; report will follow.