When I was young, or not so young, I used to ask my father and my mother to tell me about their wedding. They didn’t like to do it too much claiming that they had forgotten. I now realize that maybe the truth was that they wanted to forget!
The post is long but so are marriages
leaving that aside, the thing is that I am fascinated by weddings. This fascination was not just about the pomp and the grandeur of an Indian wedding. Very simply, I wanted to be the groom. Not because the brides caught my fancy (well to be honest sometimes they did!). It was because I wanted to be at the center of attraction, the cynosure of all eyes. Everybody fretted and fussed over the groom, for a few days at least everyone was there to attend to him and indulge his whims. He got the first choice, the most attention. Later I learnt that’s the same treatment is given to death row inmates an hour before their execution.
How I am going to find that girl or who its going to be is still in question, but that’s for another post, but I can picture my Indian wedding right now.
It will be a love marriage. And no it wasn’t one of those pansy “arranged-cum-love marriages”. What’s an “arranged-cum-love-marriage” anyway? I mean isn’t it an oxymoron? It just means you can’t get a girl for yourself and your parents have to step in. And you are too ashamed to accept it and like to put a veneer of “love” to cover it. Let’s face it…. arranged marriage is all about the BBB factor: the Bigger and Better Bet. Guys go for the prettiest girl they can find while girls go for Mr. Moneybags. After all, that’s all you can judge before an arranged marriage. If richer get the prettier, where’s the love? And when you start something on the basis of such corporeal considerations, how does “love” ever grow? I also find the term “love marriage” rather curious. It precludes “arranged” marriages from having “love” in it!
My marriage is most likely to take place in
Pretty soon I would realize that things were going to be very different from now on. For one, my mother will keep on repeating that I was going to become someone else’s. And that my loyalties would change yada yada yada.
Of course Ma wanted to be reassured that my loyalties to her were NOT going to change. That I was going to still be mama’s boy and that I should always remember who brought me up. Needless to say, I will have to hug her … “Oh Ma of course I am still your baby ”.
The fact was that the wedding was not yet finished and there was no denying that I couldn’t piss her off at this stage. Or get her overtly sentimental. She is the main organizer around the house. Men are no good at this stuff.
The preparations would start start. Being a lazy guy, I let my mother do most of the work. After all, This was the marriage of her first son. So I did not want to deprive her of the happiness of arranging everything herself. That would have been a most selfish thing to do. So I profitably used whatever time I could get to spend with my to-be-wife and to be generally up to “no good”.
Then it would be time for shopping, Now shopping I hate, so I am hoping by that time my plans for inventing organic pants- which grow with you and change according to occasion- will be ready for human testing.
Then ofcourse would be time for the invitations- You all are invited- I couldn’t get married without you.
Then before the wedding you have the tradition of taking gifts and packing them in such a pretty way that you don’t want to open the wrapper. A mountain of wasted effort. But then again so is marriage!
it’s rather fun however especially since I wasn’t doing it. My aunts did it interspersing their efforts with attempts to pull my leg. It’s all in the game and I took it gamely. Except that I have heard these same gags like millions of times. And such lame ass too. Chillers like “ Oh thinking about your wife”. Yeah what do you want me to think about? You? Of course I am thinking about my wife. What’s their problem? I know they are trying to be friendly. But somehow when you are missing your wife (you are not supposed to see her for a few days before the marriage or something to that effect) its not exactly what you like to hear.
Then the day of the marriage. And then I realized that this wasn’t a question of the groom being important. It was a matter of being made the center of a huge joke. It was some sort of Shakespearean comedy of errors in which nothing made sense. Except that everyone but the players were enjoying it. It was one enormous Chinese water torture spread over a day, and then continued for a week.
For starters, I have to wake up at the crack of dawn. Ostensibly to taste some curd. For good luck or something, Indian tradition. Who the hell thought of this anyway? I would do no such thing. Wake up pretty late, have a dash of curd. According to custom I wasn’t supposed to eat for the day but Geneva Conventions forbids POWs from being deprived of 2000 calories a day. So I ate naturally.
The next ceremony is a strip tease show where I would have to stand bare-torso in front of a gaggle of middle-aged women (aunts and neighbors) while I was smeared with turmeric and then bathed. And I wasn’t going to stand shirless e while someone poured water down my spine. This was my marriage, not some public spectacle. Plus I don’t really have the figure to display my torso, a Greek god I am not by any means!I am to be smeared with garlic. While the cameramen and video photographers make sure that this moment of embarrassment is enshrined forever.
Lots of photos. Lots of smiles. Please look this way. Yes over here hold these flowers. Yes look this way. Just roll your eyes…yes just right! The evening was off to a flying start.
The car was bedecked with flowers. I had a tough time getting into the car. I meanI had thorns up my ass.
Then of to the place of marriage. This the girl gets to decide so it can be anywhere, was escorted and asked to sit on a throne. I felt like a king. No not really. Actually, I felt like a fool with the cameramen making me move my face every angle. Focussing, lighting me from different angles. If that was not enough, strange people whom I have never seen before (and unlikely to see again) were coming and introducing them to me. To be honest, everyone looked the same . I smiled stupidly at them and muttered something inane like “Oh nice to see you again”. Of course I haven’t seen them before…. there were a lot of them. Of different ages. I couldn’t look at them too close for the sake of decency. No one likes it if the groom is ogling at other girls. But you know me. So I convinced myself these girls were actually guys and looked at them with the same impersonal aura of boredom as I would if they were of the same gender as I am. They perhaps thought I was being rude. Couldn’t be helped. The flip side would be that if I looked at them the way I usually look at ladies their age, they would think I am a letch. Which in a way is closer to the truth, but then again who said I cared a rat’s ass about truthfulness. One thing I couldn’t help noticing, my wife’s sister’s ages had a wide distribution. As a friend of mine told me: That’s a good investment for the future. You get my drift right?
Now the best part goodies, and I am talking about presents. Which is a big thing for the groom, as most people seem to think its fine to buy gifts for the bride but not for the groom. Hello! There is another person getting married too !!! I mean if women are equal to men then why not have the same principle be carried over with regard to the disbursement of gifts? Why the sexism here eh? This had been an issue that had bothered me ever since I saw my uncle getting married when I was ten years old. And I noticed that he hardly got nothing for himself in comparison to what my aunt got. Though really I didn’t mind it too much now… as long as one of us got the presents it stayed in the “family”. As you can see dear readers, I had already been “broken in ” as horses are and become quite house-trained. So much so that my wife getting gifts and not me didn’t really hurt as much as I thought it would. [ Incidentally if any girl is reading this I am very happy at the gifts I will get. No, I am not an ungrateful ******..I am just saying this to make a point about the “relative” skewed way people give gifts]
Now during the eremony you have to take off your shoes. Just like in any other Indian ceremony…wearing shoes isn’t really the sartorial style of choice . Unfortunately, no doubt influenced by Hindi film “family” movies (which are nothing but elaborate wedding videos of nice looking people with no problems in the world other than “love” ), people have stumbled upon this irritating tradition of stealing the groom’s shoes. The tradition is that the groom is supposed to be teased and then asked to pay his in-laws to get his shoes back.
In times when the grooms were milking the brides dry with their dowry demands, perhaps there was some poetic justice in this. Now it makes no sense. But then again I wouldn’t be doing a traditional marriage if I skip these traditions.
Then the marriage part, which I am going to skip in the post- its getting to long.
After the wedding is the tradition in which people are supposed to not let the newly wed sleep.
Well everyone has to fall asleep after that . And I dont want to wake them up as well as the rest of the others. It is a nice opportunity for both of us to catch some sleep..my poor wife will suffer even more than me cause her rituals are more elaborate. Now will be the best time for us to sleep. Except for a minor technicality: everybody was asleep, there aint any room for us. And I do need my room baby!
Well just as I thought I was going to sing, they fell asleep. And I didn’t want to wake them up as well as the rest of the others. It was a nice opportunity for both of us to catch some sleep..my poor wife had been suffering even more than me cause her rituals are more elaborate. Now was the best time for us to sleep. Except for a minor technicality: everybody was asleep, there wasn’t any room for us. And I do need my room baby!
Now reflections. What one carries with him once the thing is over. Well really it wasn’t over yet, there would be some ceremonies next day, and lot of misty-eyed weeping during the farewell
As I said what any shrink will tell you is that the important thing is what I got out of the experience. Firstly a marriage ceremony is so lengthy and ends up being such torture that no one in their right mind would ever get married twice. That’s the problem with Christian marriages: they are too small and painless. Hence the high divorce rate in Western countries. Over here we have perfected a marriage technique so that the groom over and over again is reminded of his responsibilities. He is made to sit in revealing clothing so that people can see he is more or less physically ok. His suppleness is tested by the ballerina toes, his intuition by putting the vermilion without looking at the bride, how easily he can part with cash by all the tips he has to give to all and sundry, and in sum his patience is tested all throughout. The upshot is you would never again want to go through with this.
As for the importance I got , like all fame, it’s all ephemeral. No matter how much I disliked being the center of attraction, it felt a whole lot worse when everything was over and I went back to being my regular Joe once again.
But no that day did change me in a way. It was that day which made me the most important person in my wife’s life. And that’s what made it worth the while. No matter how insignificant I may be, no matter how many regret letters I get from jobs and flames from my advisor, no matter how fat I am and how many consecutive zeroes I get while batting there is one person to whom I will always be number one. Once the music dies, the glitter of ornaments vanish into the night and the flowers wither away,that is the only feeling that remains.
Now all I need is the bride- please sign up below.
Or you could leave a comment- only if you are a guy or you are not hot.
1 comment:
Awwww shucks... That was soo touching. Of course I'd sign up in a heart beat, but that would really ruin the salacious, fiendish, animalistically amorous little 'rapport' we have going on now, wouldn't it?
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