Hello Punjab! compared to other parts of India that I saw, the highways and streets are clean. We arrived to the hotel and decided to rest a couple of hours before we go to Diljit’s house. Today there will be the Henna night. We were joined in the hotel by the rest of Team Tübingen namely, Boss, Sibylle, Justus and Heike, Daniel and Lena, and Filip. We are now 10 people and with two cars we started driving to where Alvi, the bride, and her family were staying.
The henna night is where mainly the bride and the ladies of the families have beautiful floral drawing on their arms and legs by expert henna artists. An abundance of music, food and good laughter makes it a lively event before the wedding. We gave in to the rhythms and joined our new local friends in dancing our asses till midnight. Here and there was a break for him or her. I love Punjabi people. They have good food, good music and a certain chilliness about them that makes you feel that all what you aim at in life can probably not bring you the same happiness they have, just by being Punjabis! Some cultures are just happy. In their eyes, you see dreams, of going to where you live and living in similar conditions. But do they see in our eyes that we have indeed more comfort, but less dreams? We live better but probably live less! I had to love them, envy them and copy their dance style.
While the ladies in our group had the most beautiful of henna drawings and decorations around their hands, the men decided to get tattoo-styled drawings. Justus, Daniel and I have convinced the artists to give us some designs. I was somehow unlucky and got an ugly drawing that seemed a bit like fishbone or a chewed piece of gum. I have to say this made me a bit sour 😀 imagining that this piece of …ehem.. will stay on my arm for sometime, made me at unease. Alvi and Ashley, here sister, convinced me to ask the 2nd artist to fix the situation and improvise a solution. In my opinion, he did a great job by drawing a badass Dragon that had a slightly long ears (donkey-dragon). It was much better than the previous thing that I had on my arm.
We were dead tired.. most not having slept enough which we discovered to be the theme of the trip: A lot of dancing and partying, lack of sleep, and .. waiting 🙂
