Hindu religeous ceremony details

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Apr 16: Invitations


Link to wedding invitation

The invitation is created in 25 languages representing various regions of the world, various eras and language families.

India is represented by Marathi, Sayali’s and my mother tongue and an Indo-European language, as well as by Tamil, a Dravidian language spoken by my ancestors. Chinese and Japanese symbolize north-east Asia, whereas Malay and Vietnamese represent south-east Asia. Urdu, Persian and Turkmen (an Altaic language), as well as Arabic and Hebrew (two Semitic languages) represent western Asia and the Middle East. Egyptian Hieroglyphics, Nigerian Pidgin English and Arabic stand for Africa. While Russian, Ukrainian, Serbian, Romanian and Hungarian (a Uralic language) correspond to Eastern Europe, German, Latin, Greek and French signify Western Europe. While Spanish epitomizes South America, English typifies North America and Oceania.

The only continent not represented is Antarctica. None of my penguin friends returned my emails.

The wedding invitation is also translated into ancient languages of historical importance, such as Latin, Greek, Persian and Egyptian Hieroglyphics.

This is the first-ever wedding invitation “written” in Proto-Indo-European, a reconstructed language supposedly spoken by Indo-Europeans (Aryans) before they started invading the world over 4,000 years ago. My former linguistics professor, a world-renowned expert in this language, has created this translation.

Many thanks to everyone who helped create this one-of-a-kind wedding invitation. We will post the printouts of the wedding invitation at the wedding. They will make our wedding really special.



The Hindu religeous ceremony will take place on April 27 in Pune, a city 100 miles from Mumbai (Bombay). The rituals start on the 24th; they are an excuse to have more fun. As a bonus, you are also invited to my sister Swapna's wedding to my friend Aniket, which will take place on the 29th. You will be part of the wedding party throughout the ceremonies. We will be very happy if you can make it, and will do our best to ensure you have a great time. There will be music, dancing, beautiful clothes and good food all around. It's an experience you will not forget for the rest of your life!

We urge you to spend as much time as you can with us! But we can also help you make travel arrangements if you want to visit other destinations in India. If you are really busy, the bare minimum journey is you leave home on Tuesday evening to arrive in Mumbai by Wednesday evening, then leave Mumbai on Saturday night to arrive at home on Sunday. Of course, we want you here more than that!

Please see the program in the table below. Better links explaining the rituals will be provided soon.

The Program

Apr 24, Tue	Afternoon: Amar & Swapna's Halad (+ music & dance), Mehndi Evening: cocktail party
Apr 25, Wed	-
Apr 26, Thu	Afternoon: travel to Pune Evening: Simant Pujan, Dandiya (stick dance)
Apr 27, Fri	Morning: Amar-Sayali's religious ceremony Evening: Amar-Sayali's reception Night: travel back to Mumbai
Apr 28, Sat	-
Apr 29, Sun	Afternoon: Aniket-Swapna's religeous ceremony Evening: Aniket-Swapna's reception

Tentative program of the guests

Chris, Jo, Jo's mom, Hong, Peter and Kathryn will have exactly the same program. They are refered to as Chris+ in the table below. Roger and Elie will also have the same program until Sunday, Apr 30.

Apr 20, Fri	Elie: leave from France Chris+, Roger: leave from JFK by Delta with Amar
Apr 21, Sat	Elie: arrive in Mumbai in the morning Chris+, Roger: arrive in Mumbai at night
Apr 22, Sun	Chris+, Roger, Elie: shopping and hang out in Mumbai
Apr 23, Mon	Chris+, Roger, Elie: sight-seeing and hang out in Mumbai
Apr 24, Tue	Ceremonies (see table above)
Apr 25, Wed	Chris+, Roger, Elie: sight-seeing and hang out in Mumbai
Apr 26, Thu	Vivek: arrive in Mumbai at night and travel to Pune
Apr 26-29	Ceremonies (see table above)
Apr 29, Sun	Chris+, Vivek: leave for home from Mumbai at night
Apr 30, Mon

Who's coming?

Folks traveling from New York are taking the Delta direct flight that leaves JFK at 9:55pm and leaves Mumbai at 12:20am on the displayed dates.

People	Num.	From	Status	Departure from home	Departure from Mumbai
From Yale
Chris & Jo	3	NY	Yes	Apr 20	Apr 30
Chris's parents	2	Atlanta	Yes	Apr 18	May 1
Vivek	1	NY	Yes	Apr 25	Apr 30
Sheep	1	DC	Yes	Apr 20	Apr 30
Hong	2	NY	Yes	Apr 20	Apr 30
Steve	1	NY	Yes	Apr 16	Apr 30
From sanofi-aventis/New Jersey
Elie	1	France	Yes	Apr 23
Roger	1	NJ	Yes	Apr 20	May 7
Kathryn	1	NJ	Yes	Apr 20	Apr 30

Useful information and links for travelers

Tickets
A couple of links to travel agents' sites: Alantia, Travelair. April fares for some airlines are not out yet, but they are usually comparable to March fares. Since April is not a high season, the roundtrip ticket from the US will most probably be ~$1000. We can arrange the ticket through my travel agent, who usually gives the best price.

These are the tentative airline fares (including tax, fuel surcharge etc.) from New York area. They have one stop in Europe (except Delta, which is direct). I can make the booking any time. The sooner the better (especially for Kuwait Airways).

Airline	Fare	US-India schedule	India-US schedule	Comments
From JFK
Delta	1250	955P-1010P	1220A-700A	Direct flight
Kuwait	870	915P-510P 1045P-450A	610A-755A 930A-315P	on both journies: 1 stop on WFSu, 2 stops on TThSa, doesn't fly on M.
Swiss	1230
Lufthansa	1285
From Newark
British	1160			fare varies widely & depends on the time of booking
Air France	?			not known yet
Lufthansa	1285	950P-1125A 145P-100A	250A-750A 1255P-335P
Northwest	1050	440P-600A 1030A-1050P	1250A-700A 930A-1135A	this fare only if returning after May 7

Travel inside India is quite cheaper than in the US.


Visa
Consulate General of India in New York: a six month tourist visa is available. In person, it is obtained the same day. Visa by express mail is also available.


Immunizations
CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/travel/indianrg.htm
MDTravelHealth: http://www.mdtravelhealth.com/destinations/asia/india.html


Sightseeing
Map of India (Mumbai is on the western coast, Pune is southeast of Mumbai)
Mumbai sightseeing
India tourism
Destinations: Goa, Agra (Taj Mahal), Ajanta-Ellora caves

Suggested itineraries and more links are coming soon...

About us

Sayali (sy + lee) Bhat: Born and brought up in Pune, Sayali, 24, has completed her M.Com. (Master of Commerce) degree with honors, and she is soon going to become a chartered accountant. She is quite adventurous, and loves traveling, hiking (she has conducted hiking tours) and rafting. She also likes to play cards, make friends and watch south Indian movies (the best entertainment ever). Despite being a Brahmin, she loves to eat fish and craves to eat anything that moves (doors of heaven are closed to her). She has more family members than the population of Somerville, and more friends than the population of Somerville and Bridgewater combined. Her charms are hard to resist, especially for eligible bachelors in New Jersey; but she sometimes makes wrong decisions, especially regarding eligible bachelors in New Jersey.

Amar Drawid: Tired of standing in the top ten in statewise exams in the fourth, seventh, eighth and twelvth grade in India, Amar, now 28, decided to try his luck in the US. He devoted the four years at Yale to ping pong, foosball and that ultimate sport, the ultimate frisbee, while throwing his friends' hats across classrooms, reciting poems in front of professors, getting cakes thrown into his face and receiving death threats (for scoring forty points above the mean in an organic chemistry test depsite being half an hour late because he fell asleep in the hot shower), and finally obtained a BS and an MS with Magna Cum Laude in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemsitry. He has been glued to Sanofi-Aventis for the last six years like a blockbuster drug sticking to its receptor, and is pursuing his PhD in Computational Biology at Rutgers when not busy talking on the phone with Sayali.

Swapna Drawid: After living in Mumbai, Maharashtra and Minneapolis, Minnesota, Swapna, 25, now eyes her future in Maryland. She is an MBA from a top Indian university, and plans to become an actuary and a chartered financial analyst. She can play the keyboard, the guitar and the flute, and can speak fluent German, but prefers to sit back and watch The Simpsons instead. She also has to deal with an obnoxious elder brother.

Aniket Desai: Before, Aniket's claim to fame was that he was Amar's high school friend; now it is that he is Swapna's fiance'. Aniket, 28, completed his electrical engineering from the best engineering school in Mumbai, and then got his MS from University of Maryland, College Park. He works (we hope) in a company near Washington, D.C., and lives in Silver Spring, MD. He was quite an unpopular student in school, thanks to his utter disragard for teachers. But he was a good student. While Amar was too busy going late to classes, sleeping during classes and being popular with the teachers the rest of the time, Aniket took all the notes and then copied them into Amar's notebook. But Amar was a good friend to him. When the teachers told him, as they often did, "Why do you hang out with that useless boy Aniket? He is not good company for you," Amar assured them that he took personal responsibility to straighten out the wayward kid.

Engagement photos

Sayali-Amar











Swapna-Aniket