I think Sandesh himself does not like someones drinking water flowing from his feet in such a ceremony, and it's obviously one of the bad practices we have been following for the sake of culture. What you see people following in the western culture are mostly good practices; they are far ahead of us in correcting bad practices (eg, we still have feudal structure and one or other form of slavery in our country, but they corrected themselves long ago). So, they follow their cultures that treat people better than we do in our cultures; but we also should strictly follow all the cultures whether good or bad just because westerners also follow all their cultures is lame excuse or justification. Just based on what you observed, criticizing Sandesh for not skiping such bad tradition is also not fair i guess. Sandesh might have opposed the idea of going through this practice as a marriage ritual to so-called purohit about and purohit might have rejected it. or he might have talked to his family to skip this practice; and his family might have asked him to shut up saying like, "goda ko pani nakhai pani biha hunchha? bidhi puraunu pardaina?" or he might have talk to bride's side to skip this; but brides mom, grand mo, dad, etc might have reasoned somthing like, "natini ko or chhori ko goda ko paani pani khana naupaune hamile? teso garda ta agati ma parchhau hai hami?" who knows? It's difficult to revolt in our soceity especially against some bad tradition. So, Sandesh might have reluctantly accepted the tradition even when he might not like it, who knows? Goda ko pani matrai hoina, goda ma dhogne chalan pani naramro ho ni, tara ke garnu? bhanera matra nuhune.