I, in my lifetime, on an average have attended less than a marriage every year and none for the last three years. A statistic my mother is not very proud of for she’s an ardent believer of the Indian mothers’ theory which states that the number of guests in your marriage are in direct proportion to the number of marriages you’ve attended. Marwari marriages are more substance and more sound. While people around me find a strange pleasure in wedding celebrations, I suffer in the midst of all topsy-turvydom, traditional and elaborate customs (which often take over a month for execution). Being from a hardcore Marwari family, marriages are never personal and always universal. It’s an occasion where everyone who you didn’t even care to check the existence of for as long as two decades is invited. Old memories are rekindled and new resolutions are made to be in touch from then onwards.
If you are an unfortunate single soul like I am, everyone will make sure that you starve but work hard till the last guest has been satiated with all the delicacies on the menu. You’ll be held responsible for everything that goes wrong and nothing that goes right. So if there is a fistfight at the buffet, no one but you will be chided off. You are even supposed to know what went wrong with the sounds and why the ghohdi-wallah did not turn on time! At the top of that, better keep in check your testosterone levels while stealing glances at the largest annual conglomeration of beauties. Either you’ll end getting beaten up or you’ll lose your single status the very next season.
In such a setting, everyone will notice everyone but the bride and the groom. Poor they are made to sit on a seating no less decorated than the Peacock throne in the midst of all this pandemonium. At the top of that, they are supposed to smile and look happy all the time lest someone photo-capture a sulky state of theirs to make fun at the post-wedding ceremonies.
No Marwari marriage is complete unless there are altercations between some ‘historical rival gangs’ who happened to cross paths at the bash. Mostly, it results in reconciliation. Initiation is made by the group who realizes that they have under-estimated the number of members in the rival gang and then both channelize their violence streak by abusing the bandwallahs often on the pretext that they didn’t play the desired Bollywood number.
The success of marriage is a direct function of the number of hours it blocked the traffic at the busiest route of the city. And no traffic policeman will ever dare to play a spoilt.
Alcohol is mostly a strict no-no but opium and grass of ‘unknown-to-me’ kinds go with the tradition. If you are a five year old, you are supposed to politely refuse the offerings, but cajoled you’ll be nonetheless.
In all the marriages I’ve so far attended, I’ve always found myself struggling to find a space of my own. Nobody will allow me to enjoy my sumptuous meal unless I’ve proved my worth by working in sync with the caterers all the while. I’ll be forced to make embarrassing dance movements at the every baraat-stoppage. But the most prominent reason of not attending such bashes is the fear of getting into the eyes of our esteemed Marwari fraternity who’ll no doubt empathize with me and curse my parents for making me stay single at the age of twenty-two (:D)! Marwari weddings, hence I avoid.
©Rakesh 2011
©Rakesh 2011
