An Indian bride has married a guest at her wedding after her groom-to-be had a seizure and collapsed.
After yesterday's tragi-comic story of a northern India girl on a hunger strike outside her in-law's home, I thought I had read everything. Then came this remarkable story, also out of northern India.
Reports said the groom, Jugal Kishore, was epileptic and he had kept the information from the bride, Indira, and her family.
While Mr Kishore was taken to hospital, the angry bride decided to switch husbands.
She asked a member of her brother-in-law's family, who was a guest, to step in and marry her instead. He agreed.
The incident took place in Rampur town in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.
According to a report in The Times of India, Mr Kishore, 25, fell to the ground in front of the wedding guests just as he was reaching out to garland Indira.
On his return from the hospital, Mr Kishore pleaded with Indira to change her mind, telling her that he would be ridiculed by friends and relatives if he went home without a bride, but she refused.
Local police official Ram Khiladi Solanki told the BBC that Mr Kishore and his family were initially upset and lodged a complaint with the police.
"But since the bride is already married now, what can anyone do? So the families have resolved the matter and the complaint has been withdrawn," he added.
Many marriages in India are 'arranged' marriages, not based on love, so this should not be too shocking. The detailed scroll work on the bride's arms and hands hint at a considerable amount of preparation for an Indian wedding; perhaps so much so that the bride was unwilling to have it all go to waste.
That brings to mind elaborate western weddings where sometimes the wedding becomes much more important than the marriage. Brides may spend a year planning and organizing her wedding but very little time, if any, planning her relationship with her groom. In such marriages, the groom is close to being irrelevant, being needed only as a prop at the altar and the head table, so switching men at the last minute would not be out of the question.
Christians are called 'the bride of Christ' in the New Testament. We have been chosen by Him to spend Eternity with Him once the wedding feast has occurred. But I wonder if some of us spend too much time looking forward to that wedding feast when we will be with Christ, body, soul, and spirit, rather than concentrating on our relationship with Him now, before the wedding.
The primary goal of a Christian in this 'engagement' period should be to get to know Jesus both intellectually and intimately. Jesus prayed that we would be 'one' with Him and with each other. If we are 'one' with Christ, we will do His will and glorify Him without even trying.
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