All smiles amid testing times

Fourteen people were married off in a communal ceremony at a relief camp in Sukkur.

SUKKUR/ HYDERABAD: Although the floods have passed, people are still coming to terms with the trail of destruction left behind. To have a reason to celebrate amid this testing time is nothing short of a miracle for the flood survivors.

However, it was all smiles at a relief camp in Sukkur when 14 people from Karampur, Raheemabad, Thul and Mirpur Barro were married off in a communal ceremony on Sunday.

Dressed in traditional wedding outfits, seven brides and their grooms, wearing kameez shalwar and ajrak, were also presented with clothes, makeup, a dinner set and money by the Ehsaan Trust to start their lives together.

“We had started collecting donations to get these couples married off as they were unable to get married due to the floods,” said Ehsaan Trust chairman Noor Muhammad Shaikh. “Today, I was able to take care of my responsibility. My daughter got engaged before the floods, but I could not get her married amid the problems that followed,” said the father of one of the brides.

The event, which continued all day long, was not just a joyous occasion for the couples, as campers were also very happy to be a part of the ceremony.

Meanwhile, campers at the Hilal-e-Ahmar relief camp in Hyderabad also had a reason to celebrate as they were guests at a communal wedding ceremony in which three couples were married.

Shazia and her family, who hailed from Nathan Shah, Dadu, were very happy to be part of the celebrations as Shazia’s brother and sister were among the six people who were to be married at the ceremony.

However, while Kulsoom Leghari, one of the brides, looked happy with the arrangements at her wedding, her groom, Abdul Rasool Khoso, said that he was a little disheartened by the fact that the occasion had fallen short of what he had imagined his wedding would be like.

The event, complete with a musical evening, was organised by the Sindh Development Association, Hilal-e-Ahmar and the Hyderabad Gymkhana Club.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 27^th, 2010.