Marriage in India is a big deal; a very big
deal in fact. It’s more like a festival, where the pre-marriage rituals span
for almost a week before the final marital rites take place. Exhaustive,
time-consuming, energy-consuming and highly expensive, marriages in India are
more about displaying familial wealth instead of celebrating a union of two
people – however corny the latter sentence might sound.
The over-clichéd concept of diversified
cultures in this country is never more applicable than when it comes to
marriage. Each community has its own unique rituals which add to the complexity
of the whole event making it sound even more intimidating than what it probably
is.
Just a few days ago, I happened to talk to
my parents about the whole concept of an elaborate wedding. From what I have
garnered so far, it seems in a Tamilian wedding, a bride gets three saris from
her side of the family plus one from the groom’s side. Put into context me –
who utterly dislikes wearing the six yards of Indian toga wrapped around my
legs and waist. It’s like a heady disaster waiting to happen, flapping round
the ankles even without the wearer consciously twirling around.
Trying to explain this scenario to my
father was even more excruciating. Statements like “why give me three saris,
when I won’t be even wearing a single one?” seemed to have no effect on
him. On the contrary a response of “Why not, you can always habituate
yourself to the concept after marriage” seemed to make perfect sense to him
and my mother.
A sari however is just one side of the
whole Tamilian wedding story. Apart from the saris, there are garlands involved
– bands and bands of garlands. Every ritual has its own share of garlands. Garlands
around the neck literally smother the girl and the groom while the garland
weaved around the girl’s hair is enough to give her spondylitis for the rest of
her life. Of course, it’s only the girl who gets to wear the garlands. The
groom escapes the whole rigmarole and is relatively unscathed for the whole of
the ceremony. He swaggers grinning toothily at the knowledge that he has
pocketed the girl without causing any bodily harm to himself in the process.
Who knew garlands could be so dangerous?
After the turn of saris and garlands, it’s
the turn of relatives. I have closely seen five marriages in my immediate
family and when a marriage is fixed, it is interesting to watch the way the
number of invitation cards to be printed is settled. It is literal bargaining, haranguing
and haggling not with the other party in the marriage, but within one’s own
family. Propriety demands that even the remotest relatives are invited so that they
don’t feel offended or ill-treated. Ironically, most of such remote relatives
might have not even met the bride or the groom but since marriages are unofficial
havens for long-lost relatives to re-group and discuss life’s happenings, such
relatives turn up at the venue without a single lapse in memory.
The result of such relatives arriving poses
nothing but acute problems for both the groom and the bride. Long-lost
relatives, never-before-met relatives and seen-before-yet-forgotten-since
relatives – they huddle around the girl and the boy giggling and teasing,
sharing their experiences about their wedding and what-not’s. After they
disperse, innate curiosity makes the unknown party in the marriage duo pip up
with the clichéd question – ‘who is that person?’ Considering that these kin would be never seen
again, until the next wedding i.e., the questionee doesn’t really know how to
answer best without letting it slip that the exact relation about that person
is unknown.
After mentally evaluating all these
potential happenings, I have reached to a viable conclusion – elopement. I
elope with the guy I am supposed to get married to, no fan-fare, no hoopla and
no milling kith around. There is only I, me and myself with the guy – he, him
and his-self.
The only problem in such a decision-making
is I need to find a like-minded guy who is equally averse to the idea of going
through a week-long process just to ensure that at the end of the week, someone
else will share his name. Of course there is also the problem of explaining the
workability of this solution to my parents, who believe in the vintage orthodoxy
of girls being meek and mild as opposed to opinionated and wild.
