The stars decide the working days in this job. When astrologers sit down with two families, to look at the cheena – astrological charts – and identify the auspicious date for nuptial ties, the band baja walas (wedding bands) are equally interested in the dates. This group of strangers are somehow integral to the big fat (and loud) Southasian wedding.
Dressed in shiny shoes and red uniforms, often with golden epaulettes and caps comparable to military finery, the raucous wedding band is responsible for telling the neighbourhood that the house they play for is celebrating the wedding of a son in the family. Hindu weddings in urban Nepali families seem incomplete without an ensemble of brass band musicians playing high octave music in front of their houses, bejewelled in lights and flowers, to the joy, as well as annoyance of the neighbourhood.
The air vibrates as the trumpets and trombones blow and the drummers start pounding, adding to the chaos, as family members ready themselves for the janti – the traditional wedding procession that travels from the groom's house to that of the bride. Amidst the clanging and the banging, the blinged-out relatives shout their namastes and 'how do you dos'. And leading the modern Nepali janti, while the groom himself is cooped up in his ornately decorated car, is the band. As the emsemble works on one hit number after another, boozed-up aunts, uncles, cousins and friends swing their hips to the cacophony.
"I have a deep love and respect for this job. The day we are invited to a house, it is decorated grandly, like no other day; everyone is dressed up, good food is cooked. It is a joyous and auspicious occasion; how much more fortunate can we be?" says Ram Bahadur Pariyar, who runs a wedding band business in Kathmandu, a business his father started over half a century ago.