The wedding season has everyone in a tizzy each year: jewellers, caterers, florists, entertainers and tailors. Not to forget the families of the bride and groom themselves. Add to it the fad for special mahurats or favourable taras and you have a string of weddings all over town on the same day. Beautifully decorated venues, quaintly labelled ‘marriage palaces’, suddenly come to life. I’ve often wondered what they are used for the rest of the year.
Getting the invitation cards out to everyone used to be a major challenge in the past. Having to visit every invitee with a box of sweets or more contemporary goodies, meant a terrible headache for the parents of the bride and groom. Thankfully nobody expects this anymore in most cities. Professional couriers armed with huge guest lists now deliver the colourful invitation card and accompanying dabba. You are just a tickmark on that list, but cribbing about not being invited ‘personally’ is so crass. Moreover, you can do things the same way at your son’s wedding.
Decked in their finest and shiniest, families pack themselves into their cars in anticipation of an evening dhamaka to the accompaniment of a lavish profusion of food and drink. Some conversation over the din of the stage performers, some people-watching amidst the sea of strangers and some weekend gluttony after a week of virtuous dieting are the norm.
Family folklore is replete with gleefully recounted wedding stories. Like that of the man who attended one with his entire extended family in tow and even participated in the milni ceremony, pulled to the forefront by the eager family of the bride, until realisation dawned that they were at the wrong wedding. There were two simultaneous events that day in the same marriage palace but in different halls. Tells you that fine clothes, a broad smile and a willingness to break into a bhangra step will bring you surprise gains — including the acquisition of a temporary set of relatives, all similarly turned out in their glittering best.
If you have attended some weddings without a glimpse of the groom, you have only yourself to blame. For you may have indulged in some shaadi-hopping on a mahurat night, not waiting for the baraat to arrive at any of the five weddings you raced through that evening.
If this Sanskrit verse is to be believed, Indians have not changed much since ancient or medieval times: kanya varayate roopam, mata vittam pita shruta/bandhavah kulamicchanti mishtannam itare janah “(At the wedding) the bride takes delight in the good looks of the groom while her mother is proud of his wealth. The bride’s father boasts of how accomplished the groom is, while her kinsmen take pride in his family lineage ... meanwhile, all the invited outsiders revel in a good feast.”
Smile broadly and concentrate on what to wear to the sangeet of your colleague’s daughter. The magenta kanjivaram or the yellow chiffon? Allow that frisson of delight to course through your body at such vibrant-hued thoughts. And finally, relax, it is somebody else’s wedding after all!