I love India. It's a place of people, a place where high value is placed on sharing and common bonds. People are forgiven quickly, there is an natural ease with which people form friendships. It is also a very intense and noisy place, and sometimes I really miss the peace and silence of my countryside house in the UK. I also miss a certain sense of spirituality that peace brings. Who knows what spirituality is, but I believe it is an areligious concept, an appreciation of something unknown that connects us all. Some call it God. I like to call it simply, life. I love India, but recently I witnessed two events which we would typically associate with Spirituality, in a land often thought of as highly Spiritual, which in my opinion were not remotely so. Perhaps I was unable to sense what others did, or perhaps Spirituality here is found in other customs I am yet to explore, such as Yoga and meditation, but me tell you my story.

Last weekend, I ventured to Kolhapur with the whole team for the wedding of one of our developers. It is a city of around 420,000, well known in Maharastra for its food and customs. Kolhapur is in Maharastra, the gigantic Indian state taking up a sizeable portion of Indian's lower peninsula called Deccan. I've passed through Kolhapur on the way to and from Goa by road a few times. It's on the road to Bangalore, and about 300km south of my home town, Pune. It's a long and bumpy journey on Indian roads, but as we set off at 6am to ride into the rising temperatures of a summer day in the Gnat hills, I was happy. I listened to favourite songs as I thought of Alice and all that had happened in the preceeding month. I thought of my sister's wedding, a small, intimate affair set in the Scottish highlands. It was a special and joyous occasion. I wondered how Harsha's wedding would compare.

Indian weddings are often thought to be massive, exciting, colourful events that last days in India. All those things are true, in their own way. I'd been to a Muslim wedding in Pune a year earlier which was particularly peculiar because the bride and groom did not see each other until after the wedding. I was told that the Hindu wedding would be different. Our bus pulled up at the wedding hall in the midday heat. Below the steps a large beautiful circular pattern made of small granuales of coloured powder in interesting shapes. The name escapes me, but this was the biggest such work of art that I'd seen. We were warmly greeted by the father of the bride, and a number of other people looked excited to see a party arriving that included three foriengers. Anthony and Yann, my cofounders, had over dressed in traditional cloths and they in particular attracted a lot of excited attention.

Then the horn player started. It sounded like a cross between an extraordinarily loud party popper and a beginner's first attempt on a trombone. The man playing it looked like he had been plucked right from the 1600s, in all ways possible, which was entertaining, but the noise was unbearable and loud. It resonated around the large wedding hall, and after a few minutes I wasn't the only one who was beginning to show signs of intolerance. At the front of the wedding hall was a stage, and perched on top of it a highly decorated bench. The bench sat in the middle of draped cloths and a lot of coloured flowers and spotlights. It looked like a set to a movie about greek gods, or something similar, just with a lot more multicolour.

We sat ourselves at the front. The wedding hall itself filled up, and when Harsha made her way to the base of the stage I looked behind me to see that people were packed in around the entrance at the back. Luckily the shrill horn had stopped, but there was a general murmer in the hall. It was hot. Harsha was surrounded by a entourage of people, but I could see her through the scrum, and she didn't look too happy. Would anyone, if they was about to go up on a stage in front of 500 close and distant family and friends? She was dressed in a lot of clothes, and her face was almost completely hidden by decorations. It was very colourful, but not very flattering. She made her way onto the stage, looking tired and unhappy, sheparded around by stewards and family. Photographers and cameramen shone bright lights at the party and jumped around taking photos. The priest spoke on a microphone and the ceremony commenced. For the next 30 minutes he called out and performed various ritual addresses to the couple and when he said a certain word we all threw bits of coloured rice at the stage. The general murmer of the crowd never died. Then, the moment came, and it seemed they were married.

The crowd began leaving the hall, but the couple and entourage remained on stage. The rituals continued. Poor Harsha looked terrified by the whole thing, but when I caught her eye she managed a smile. It's true that in some cultures a marriage is not for the couple, but for the family. Perhaps the aim is to scare the arranged couple into conviction! Amazingly, the rituals were still going on as photographs were taken, and almost everyone had left the hall. Various smells and smokes wafted around, additional decorations were ceremoniously applied to both bride and groom, further weighing them down. When Harsha turned to face me, it looked like she had been laden with as many flowers, clothes, head-dresses, and facial decorations as was possible for a small girl to bear. Neither of the couple smiled in any of the photographs, though Harsha tried a little. I think they were also both tired, because apparently the rituals had been going on for many hours or even days before they appeared on stage.

By mid afternoon, a few hours later, after a canteen style served lunch, the rituals were still continuing. Most people had left the hall, and noone who remained was interested. I went to say goodbye to Harsha and she was still stuck in the middle of her entourage, as religous ceremonies of which she obviously understood little were conducted. I felt really sorry for her. I said thank you and goodbye and said she must be tired, to which she nodded, and I left. As I walked away from the stage I thought of Becky's wedding, to which 10 guests where invited, set by a lakeside in Western Scotland, but it was too different make any comparison. However, I couldn't help wondering if there was anything spiritual in Harsha's wedding.

Hoping there might be some spirituality in my next experience in Kolhapur, I headed with the team to the main Hindu temple, for the god 'Mahalaxmi' in the center of town. Monkeys climbed around the surrounding gates. As is custom before entering the temple enclosure, we removed our shoes and left them at a shop. The place was very crowded. It was not a high temple, more large in surface area. The stone was black in colour. We headed around the side in order to que and enter. It was even hotter now in the mid afternoon sun. Hundreds of people surrounded the place selling things, working, making noise. We had to hop over and around streams of concrete water and mounds of gravel as workmen were relaying the surface next to the black walls. The temple itself was in a state of minor disrepair and neglect. Rubbish lay on the ground near the walls. We seperated into two lines, men and women, and began squeezing along in a tight que about 20 metres from the entrance.

At the dark hole which was the entrance, I was prepared for what was to come because I've become accustomed to it. For all their unconditional love of fellow human, especially close friends and family, Indians have few manners in certain circumstances. There are moments, and I could sense this would be one of them, where it's every man and woman for himself. If I stood and was courteous to the women to my left as they entered the 5ft x 3ft hole, I would never get in, and I knew this. I did what I do at shop counters, and railway ticket lines, and barged my way through into the darkness of the temple.

Inside we contiuned a slow moving que past pillars and small shrines towards the main idol of Mahalaxmi. She is the god of wealth and money. The path through the temple twisted and turned at right angles until we approached the 5ft statue embedded in the wall in an enclosure. People wanted to pray and offer gifts to the idol as they passed, but this was to be more difficult than it seemed, because of the sheer volume of bodies in the small chamber surrounding the enclosure. I could hear the noise coming from the chamber. As I rounded the corner a man dressed in army uniform unceremoniously shoved me through the entrance like I was a prisoner. The sight that greeted me was actually quite distressing! It seemed 50 noisy people were cramming up towards the enclosure housing the idol, while getting forcibly moved past it by the might of the crowd behind them. In front of me, another army officer man was shouting and waving a stick, as he herded men past him. I was shouted at and herded quickly past the idol, and for the 10 seconds I was in the chamber, I caught a glimpse of Mahalaxmi, and gifts, and people arranging them at her feet. No time for contemplation or prayer. I felt the heave push of the noisy crowd on my back and I was out, walking past more black pillars towards the light, the exit. It was like a bad dream was coming to an end, the light at the end of the tunnel. As I stepped out into the blinding afternoon sun, I missed only the coolness the walls of the temple had provided me.

Thinking about the wedding and the temple made me wonder what spirituality was, and question the idea that it can be created with ritual. Perhaps in other parts of India, particuarly the north, there is a greater sense of peace, and naturalness of being. If I conclude anything from my trip to Kolhapur, it's how conditioned we are to a certain way of life, and how stark differences in the way other people live and conduct their rituals are sometimes difficult to understand. I love India, but not so much for its ritual, more for the way Saraubh puts his arm affectionately over the shoulder of Anupam, our new employee of 1 week, and befriends him like they have known each other for years. India is about people.