The Opulent Indian Weddings
Growing up in southern India, I always related weddings to a minimalist affair. Yes, I know the irony behind that statement. My exposure was limited to a small town in the Rayalseema region of Andhra Pradesh where weddings took place in the temples and the food spread was traditional and a pure vegetarian affair. People did splurge on the receptions but nothing that caused one to question the state of their finances at the culmination of the wedding. The two things that stood out was the extravagant jewellery on the bride and the sordid affair of the dowry and although I will never be on board with the latter, I considered the former to be a personal choice of the family, that is until I saw women in one of the wedding parties examining the bride’s jewellery and passing judgemental comments. Seriously, why do they care?
This illusion of South Indian weddings being minimalist first cracked and later shattered as I moved from my sleepy small town to the next city and then to the state capital. The more modern, richer and connected the family, the more extravagant were the weddings! Once my dad was invited to the wedding of his supplier’s daughter and upon his return, he told us that the diamonds on the bride were so big, so many and so sparkling that he didn’t remember how she looked. So, may be the supplier had tons of money to splurge but when I see similar expectation of extravagant jewellery on a bride coming from a middle class family and the parents of the bride fighting tooth and nail to meet those expectations, my blood boils a little. Just a tad!
It gets worse when we move from south to north. Once, I attended this wedding in Delhi of a colleague’s sister. One would think there was a fair going on if you were not familiar with Indian weddings. For days prior to the wedding there are events just as magnificent and as extravagant as the wedding itself. The haldi ceremony, sangeet and I don’t even know all the other rituals but through this all I see the brother running around fulfilling the demands of the groom’s family and meeting expectations of his guests. No one should be dissatisfied or else! Dowry is illegal and so these days “gifts” like a new residence, car, furniture, jewellery, clothes are given to the daughter for her new life. On the day of the wedding the bride started prepping for her big day right after noon. The bridal make up, draping the so-heavy-it-needs-four-people-to-carry-it lehenga, the heavy jewellery (which was fake because unlike southern India robberies are ripe in northern India) etc., took the bride six to seven hours which she then lugged around for another seven to eight hours because the groom’s brigade did not arrive until well past midnight. The bride looked exhausted and hungry. I was so flummoxed I asked the brother whether the groom even wanted to marry? why would he be so late and keep his bride waiting? It doesn’t make any sense. He told me that that is normal. I don’t get it. There should be no one more important than the bride and the groom on their wedding day but here it felt like the bride was an after-thought.
What is it about the marriage of two people that makes their families want to empty out their life’s savings? Destination weddings, celebrity weddings, billionaire weddings it keeps getting worse. I left India eight years back and from what I see this tragic splurging keeps getting better and better. There are engagement parties, cocktail parties in addition to the usual mehendi and the sangeet followed by the wedding and the reception and god knows what else. Designer outfits, food extravaganza, alcohol, DJ, hundreds if not thousands of guests, celebrity performances, global venues and the list goes on. Does it sound like sour grapes? It is not, in all honesty. I am not against a good party. Heck I love parties, music, and dolling up. However, I dislike the pressure people/ families feel to match the very high expectations. I struggle to understand why an educated strata of society would go through with this. I am sure Mr. Ambani, Sonam, Deepika, Anushka or Priyanka did not feel the brunt of their recent lavish wedding enterprises at all. A recent tweet condemning the Ambani extravaganza was replied with “the money was not wasted; it was paid to the service providers. This is how economy works.” Enlightening! I can’t argue with that statement in my right mind now, can I?
But what about the young girls who now grow up following the instagram? What about their growing expectations? I was watching this recent commercial of an Indian jewellery enterprise where the parents of the bride have prepared for her an extravagant (I am tired of using the word today) wedding trousseau but she is unhappy because it is not like the other extravagant jewellery that she desires. Then her brother plans a set for her wedding with the help of a designer. I kid not! A set, like for a movie, yes. But the bride has her own ideas and she is unhappy when she shows it to her brother and he tells her that the set is already designed. This is followed by a few more ludicrous moments which all make the bride sulk. Her fiancé notices this and the prince charming that he is, decides to give her the day of her dreams. Voila! Her mother presents her with bling identical to those that she desires and then the set is transformed to match her sketches and blah and blah. The bride is teary eyed and her parents are proud and her brother teases her as the jewellery brand’s tag line goes “royal wedding for every Indian bride.” Now what is wrong with that statement and this commercial? I wonder!
Families go down under by the time they get through the wedding of a daughter. What would they do if they have more than one? From the moment a girl is born, the parents starts saving for the girl’s wedding. If that is not ridiculous, I don’t know what is. Even in educated modern families where the girls are brought up with just as much education, freedom and independence as boys, the story is similar. Of course there are exceptions but that is all they are, anomalies in an otherwise wedding obsessed society. What is wrong with a simple ceremony with two people exchanging vows to love and respect each other in the presence of family and friends who personally know them and genuinely wish them well? Why spend life’s savings on an event that marks the beginning of a journey and not the end?
Read the other part of this Duolog(ue).
A Solemn Affair Or A Sombre Event
After reading last week’s post, one particular incident from years ago comes in mind. On a fine Monday morning, a colleague showed up at work with an ear to ear smile that seemed impossible to wipe off.
