There were sarees and sarees. Some were hanging from trees and some were tied to trees to form walls. The entire Mangalpur village, an inaccessible hamlet under Narayanpur block in Koraput district, was decorated with hundreds of colourful sarees on Saturday.
If you think it was part of an ongoing film shoot or any exhibition, you have got another think coming.
The decoration was for a wedding ceremony.
Going to make their special day memorable, brides and grooms take care of minute details of their marriage, starting from choosing a venue to their wedding attires. They even take pains to decide how the procession should be and what food items to be served to their guests.
The wedding of Masi Nachika and Tika Kendruka of Mangalpur village was no different either.
As they couldn’t afford the lavish decoration, the young boys and girls devised a plan to make it a special day for Masi and Tika, in a different way.
On Saturday morning, they went around the village and collected three to four sarees from each house. The village women happily gave their sarees to them.
The next job was the difficult task of decorating the village. But their united efforts made the job easier. They turned the entire village into a marriage mandap. There were sarees everywhere in the village. While some sarees were hanging from trees, some were used for making the roof of the marriage pandal. The entire village was colourful.
“Three to four sarees were collected from each house in the village. Then the sarees were used aesthetically to decorate the village. For the marriage, a tent was erected with the first layer being prepared from tree branches and the second layer with sarees. It was a unique marriage ceremony. The decoration, not the marriage, was the centre of attraction,” said Yudhisthira Turuk, a villager.
(Reported by P Govindaraju Subudhi, OTV)