This past weekend, the family that I am staying with here in Hyderabad had to attend a wedding in a small town called Eluru and took me along with them. I noticed the differences between Hyderabad and Eluru right away. The temperature was a lot warmer, and stickier, and there were a lot more bugs. I had 24 hour electricity in Hyderabad, but here they had a weekly schedule of when they would have electricity. However putting all of this aside, the people of the village didn't let me feel like an outsider at all. I was taken in as "part of the family," and I became an integral part of all the preparations for the wedding. A traditional South Indian wedding lasts several days, and there are various rituals that take place at both the bride and grooms' houses. I was staying with the bride's family, so I was part of various events such as the henna, bindi, and bride-making ceremonies. The most interesting part was the bindi ceremony where a procession band is hired and all the ladies on the bride's side of the family go around to every house in the village to invite them to the wedding. I remember the last Indian wedding I went to in India was very similar to those in the United States: a huge hotel, lots of guests, and food. However, this wedding was very different in that everyone in the town was somehow involved with the wedding. It wasn' t just a family celebration, it was a village-wide festivity.
While I was there, I started to think about what the children at the Cambridge school had said about the vast differences between rural and city life. I thought it would be interesting if I could find a way to incorporate this issue of migration into my project by comparing urban poverty to rural poverty. Since I didn’t really have a school or anything there where I could recruit children, I asked Buddi, a maid at the house we were staying at, if she would be willing to participate. I explained the concept of my project, and how I thought it would be interesting to compare the health related problems and culture of the village to the city. Since I hadn’t brought any disposable cameras with me on the trip, I went around town with her and let her use my digital camera to take pictures.
Here are some of the pictures that Buddi took of the wedding festivities/culture and also health implications in Eluru:
The band for the bindi ceremony:
Women washing dishes in the local dam:
Several men sitting on a tractor going to town:
The village butcher shop:
Several men sitting on a tractor going to town:
The village butcher shop:
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