Wedding number 1 officially starts 21012-02-06

 Ready for the wedding ceremony ( Ganesh Pooja) wearing borrowed Sari

 Bride and her father buying vegetables

 Start of the wedding with Ganesh Pooja

 Worshiping lord Ganesh

 Jagdish's sisters enjoying themselves

 Bride and her Aunt making Pooris

 A street at Somnath ki Juni Chal

Jagdish grew up here

The wedding number 1 officially started today. All weddings ( all important things for that matter) start with Ganesh Poojan,( worshiping of Lord Ganesh). A brief story behind the importance of Ganesh:

Ganesh was the son of Lord Shiva (  the destroyer)  and lived in the Himalayas with his mother and father.  When he was a little boy, whenever his mother took a bath in the mountain river she asked him to watch out for others It so happened that his father Lord Shiva came by one day  but the obedient Ganesh did not let him pass. The father was so mad that he chopped the kid's head off ( which rolled down the mountain) . When the mother found out, she was furious and send him to go find the head and fix it. Shiva looked all over the Himalayas but could not find the head, so he got a baby elephant's head and put it on the boy;s shoulders and put life into him. When the mother saw the kid with elephant head , she was very concerned about his life so the Lord Shiva gave him the blessing that ," Ganesh will be worshiped before anyone starts anything important ." Since then, Hindus worship Ganesh before starting anything.
I had to borrow my sister in law's sari for the occasion. We all worshiped Ganesh and had a nice meal at Jagdish's brother's house. He still lives in the area where Jagdish grew up and I lived there for six months after marriage. I walked around a little. It was a slum and still is a slum but before it used to be all open fields and had a sense of camping and adventure (  at least for a while) . Now it is buildings, narrow streets, motor cycles , cows and dogs and poverty. Sisters, brothers and relatives came and it was a fun start of the wedding.
We went over to visit out old professors and colleagues ( two different ones) and had an excellent meal. Dr. Singhi's wife made sabji out of Cactus ( it was delicious) . Now I am back packing and blogging. We are heading for Bhopal and our adventure tomorrow morning.
One interesting fact: When we were in the engineering  there was just ONE engineering college in Indore. Guess how many are there now?  ....60...yes, 60 engineering colleges with tuition of at least Rs 60,000 a year . It used to be Rs 4,000.

That;s all for today, good night, saroj