Our journey to Rajkot was to learn about Indian culture through one of the most visual and audible experiences one can imagine – a wedding.
We’re told that a usual wedding in India is two, maybe three, days long. The wedding of the Kaneria (Patel) family was a four day experience for us, but seven day experience for the family, not including the many months of preparations that needed to be done to pull it off.
For the families of Viraj and Sneha this wedding is especially unique. Both families come from modest means from the same small village and years later are joined through marriage under very different social and economic circumstances. I regret that we didn’t get to learn very much about Viraj’s family as our connection was more on the wife’s side.
The Kaneria family construction business, started by the grandfather, began with small contracts such as drilling wells and building small bridges. It grew to be a multi-million dollar company as the years went on and the sons grew up to became entrepreneurs and partners in the company. While on the surface, the extravagant wedding might seem at odds with the images Westerners have of India, this event is also an economic stimulus in this region – all the way to Mumbai as staff and entertainers were brought in to make this event a success.
As “wedding crashers” we felt a bit strange attending this wedding via Annie who barely knew this family, but the Kaneria family’s warmth and hospitality washed that away. There is no way that we could repay their generosity while we are here (not that they would let us anyway), but we hope to some day on our own soil.
We would like to thank them all, especially Pankaj-bhai, the third eldest son of four of the Kaneria family (see below), who helped us immensely to get ourselves sorted with cellphone/internet access to stay connected to home and drivers to get around the city.
Take a few minutes to enjoy these photos/videos and captions of their marvellous wedding.
<< Link to more photos to come >>
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