These two words ‘Indian
Weddings’ have been dangling in my mind for quite some time now and I have
comported to the simple fact that without being amiably cynical about the
innumerable ceremonies, this dim-witted brain wouldn’t rest in peace. Oh no!
Don’t make that already bored face for I am not going to delineate the whole
process from arranging a suitable partner to faring the bride well.
It’s been quite some time
that my college dispatched me for home and God’s grace delivered me safe to my
place. Some questions are implied and their answers are more. What I am next
planning to put forth is a question which might greet you with an impish smile
on your face owing to its own tint of obviousness, but trust me, the answer
will not be that straight forward! Why do people go home? Oh no! We have more
than a dozen issues to chew our gums on and so we wouldn’t, precisely, list all
the possible reasons. But let me add just one more to your drop down menu. To
attend weddings. No, it’s not the wedding of your real brother or any other cousin
that is being talked about here, just casual weddings. You grasp that? Weddings,
which are very unfussy to us, but only theoretically.
So, we are going to attend
the wedding of some uncle’s daughter, who snubbed us as a kid, whose name we
find hard to recall when asked by some other acquaintance, whose birth did not
brighten us even 1% of how much the wedding does and who did not even choose to
be a passive part of our lives until this day,
but ‘The Book on Social Relations’, without any relaxation, says,
that if any person walks into your house to invite you with a white card in his
hand, gaudily shouting the names of two more morons falling into the marriage
pit, there is no reason why even one member of your house should stay back when
the couple is being blessed out there, in an overpriced marriage garden. In a
country like ours, where talking about the
person gains precedence over talking to the
person, happenings in the neighborhood are more significant additions to the
knowledge than happenings in the family, and Sharma ji’s bahu fascinates us more than ours, there is very little thought
left to be attended to, of whether or not to be present at the wedding ceremony.
Now, one thing which is
absolutely beyond the comprehensive capabilities of any human mind is, how can,
possibly, the marriage of two people, comfortably unnoticed all this while, stir
so much of gossip only from the point they decide to be life partners? You go
to a foreign land. You won’t find them talking about you 24 hours a day because
that’s just not the way they have been brought up! As effortless as that. But
we Indians, yes each one of us, are so accustomed to chitchatting about the
littlest of the most unfussy things that we often lose track of our own lives!
This, anyway, is a different issue altogether to be dealt with, in a separate
post. Here we were talking about the mystical ways in which weddings are Indianized solely by the people attending
it, whom you only call for a supper or you think so.
In every wedding, you are
doomed to find a gaudy group of ladies, less interested in the current wedding,
more in fixing yours. WHY? I ask, why? It is pretty hell to bypass this group,
more so, if you have just crossed your teens. You gift them a respectable Namaste and You are next is your return gift. They expect you to blush for a
while, fake of course, and then give your humble consent so that their eternal
hunt for your soul-mate can make its way; and given the generation you are born
in, more probable than not, you have given your consent to somebody already and so you just keep smiling like an absolute
idiot! Well, that again, is a different track altogether irrelevant to the flow
of ideas already trapped in here.
So, Aunties! These aunties
already have some Mandawat’s or Verma’s son/daughter in their heads
which they will, very subtly roll over the ongoing talks to put into your ears
and trust me; they WILL make sure you sense the hint. And you always thought
education brought in smartness, right? Now another thing which is carefully
designed by them is, the filters. Filters, as in, the basis on which they
selected 20 out of a whole blessed list of 100. You don’t know the 20, you
didn’t know the 100 either! You see, the entire process has been on for quite
some time. Now, just wait till the number drops down from 20 to 1. So, next
time you are insistent upon proclaiming that nothing is free, make sure you
exclude thoughts, imaginations and gossips.
Not very surprisingly, the filter in my case turns out be height and of
course, education for Engineering still is a degree for them! Amused?
Well, another attribute
these days. As a sign of modernity, they will prefer recommending partners for
you, especially male counterparts who reside in a foreign land or have spent
good 3 4 years in there, pursuing a course. Ladka
America me settled hai and then the smirk on the face as if that is the
dead end to all the miseries in life. Aunty jee, that is not! But frankly
enough, there lies no point in cribbing for you can’t really prevent someone
from talking especially when he/she is advising you, for one thing and is 20-30
years elder, for another.
This looks long for one
read, pretty that. On a very light note, so many noteworthy things go unnoticed
for we have shut our hearts and brains to the many interpretations of one single
gesture or even a remark, maybe.
Even if you are associated
in the least possible sense to a wedding, you can still have a pretty good time
only by observing people. A laugh doesn’t ask for more.
Many more appealing facts
wait to be interpreted a bit differently only to make the atmosphere light. But
as of now, what looks good is a well deserved break to the post.
Keep attending weddings.
‘Coz that’s precisely all, you are in India for!
‘Coz that’s precisely all, you are in India for!
-Anubha
Feb 3, 2013
