The Melodrama of a South-Indian Wedding

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.