kurubas

I was just reading an article about Jenu Kurubas. It has a detailed description of social practices of the tribes.
A few years ago, I attended a wedding. The bride was the daughter of a friend. This friend has a lot of foreign friends...Canadian, American and British who attended the wedding. I knew a couple of these ladies and we all sat together watching the ceremonies. The wedding rituals they chose to have was a mix of Andhra Brahmin, Tamil Iyengar, Sikh and maybe some other rituals since the family had people from all these communities. So I just watched the rituals, not really paying much attention. My neighbours however, were very interested and started asking me what each ritual meant and what came next. I know a bit about wedding rituals of my own community, but this was one hybrid wedding and I had no clue what each ritual meant. I just mumbled some not very enlightening commentary. The ladies finally came to a conclusion... all the rituals were for "Good Karma" I said "yes" with great relief ---- whatever "Good karma" meant to them.
My point of this long narrative is this... perhaps we, who are outsiders to the Jenu Kuruba, also write long descriptions of their social mores without really understanding any of it......maybe what we read as anthropology is not what it actually is.