The consequences of "I do"

I had the most exciting wedding ever. It was fraught with tension. Gloomy faces on my side, cautiously happy on my spouse's side. Neither side realizing that they should have had the exact opposite emotions.

We walked the Saptapadhi (Seven steps) around a sofa on which we were eventually allowed to sit. There was no fire, to my betrothed’s intense surprise. According to most Hindus, fire or the agni deity is the most important witness to the union.

I hail from a small community in Mangalore, which in earlier days was either very practical or more probably, a little tribal. All that was required for a wedding was a bride and a groom (duh, obviously), the parents to witness the union and the mangalsutra, the sacred thread the groom ties around the bride's throat, stamping her as married. There was no requirement for a priest or fire. It was a modified Gandharva style.

With the pernicious influence of other communities, marriages started getting more ritualistic and expensive. 

I remember simpler times when we kids ran around clutching small packets, called 'thotte', usually filled with an overly sweet 'peda’ and some savoury mixture to counterbalance that. 'Duke’s Mangola' was the drink of choice. Oh! The pleasures of that cold drink on a hot and humid, Mangalore summer day.

The day after the wedding, there would be a vortex of activity at home as a non vegetarian meal would be cooked and served to the bridegroom and his family followed by a reciprocal meal served to the bride's family a few days later. My guess is that these customs were designed to let everyone, especially the women, who didn't get as many opportunities to step out, see where their daughter was going to live or what kind of home their daughter-in-law hailed from. In those days of limited transport options, it was a big event.

However the simple customs have evolved into an elaborate set of rituals.

It started with brahmin priests getting involved, then graduated to the serving of full fledged vegetarian meals on banana leaves.

Wedding receptions now include alcohol, meat and fancily clad attendees whom neither the bride nor the groom’s family can identify. In fact a wedding isn’t even a wedding party unless there are more than five hundred people in attendance, regardless of whether they are known to the party throwers or not.

I recall summer vacations in Mangalore, attending sundry weddings, dressed up in silk finery, completely unsuited to the non air-conditioned halls, sweating profusely so that our powdered faces were streaked with rivulets of sweat.

The days preceding the wedding would be filled with exciting activities like playing dark room, cards typically a game called donkey, lagori or seven marbles and I spy, more popularly known in India as Ice Spice.

We also had a mehendi applying ceremony, which involved grinding some henna leaves into a paste and then applying it in the shape of a sun with lots of rays. Obviously our family at least, did not have any pretensions to artistry.

Members of our landed agrarian community lost their land because of the Land Ceiling Act which basically stipulated that the tiller of the land became its owner. Lots of erstwhile Zamindars lost their land to the peasants they had rented it out to. Suddenly, the feudal lifestyle underwent a sea change. Education and enterprise were now prized more than ever before. The changing flux brought with it attendant evils like the dowry system. Several rich parents of girls funded the education of boys on the condition that they marry their daughter.

With increasing upward social mobility, that evil has reduced significantly. 

Coming back to my own wedding, my husband who hails from the Marwari business community was unsure after the ceremony was over, whether we were actually married. “It feels like a make-believe marriage. If you blinked, you could have missed the ceremony! And where was the fire anyway?” He hissed, obviously unhappy that all his childhood dreams of a perfect wedding had been washed away by in-laws who had strange rituals.

I entered into my new marital home with in-laws as clueless as myself. Completely innocent and non traditional they didn't impose any do’s or don'ts. In my usual rebellious style, I decided to embrace their colourful customs, costumes and festivities with greater enthusiasm than they themselves had ever evinced.

I got the first opportunity when I attended the first wedding in the family. The decor and their dressing styles left me awestruck and I gazed at them in wide eyed wonder. Later, the festivities attached with the multi-splendored weddings had me spellbound. I thoroughly enjoyed the song and dance routines. The multi-cuisine dinners and lunches at five star hotels and the exquisite flower bedecked ‘mantap’ where the actual jaimala or the exchange of garland's took place, made me envious that my side hadn't really learnt the art of celebrating the momentous events in life.

The glamour struck, open-mouthed wonder lasted all of two weddings. After that I started remarking on the ostentatiousness of it all. The song and dance routine now seemed jaded. I think what horrified me the most was the dispensation of individual, small-sized mineral water bottles to guests. The horrific waste, creating mountainous landfills completely guilt tripped me.

The socialist in me fought with the aesthete in me, who still appreciated the wedding finery, the wrapping of gifts, the elaborate invitations and the exquisite decor. The socialist in me wondered if many thousands couldn't have got an education, the traveller in me felt the money could have been better spent in wandering and exploring new destinations. The capitalist in me felt, the expenses would have funded a mini bungalow at the least.

It's with these mixed emotions that I attend weddings now. I'm no longer judgemental about our traditional wedding meals served on banana leaves. What I am still judgemental about is the lack of aesthetics.

Going forward, I'm going to try and persuade my children to elope so that I don't have to bother with all the detailing that goes into a marriage. My retirement savings would remain intact, guests who come reluctantly anyway, battling traffic, would not complain that we didn't provide enough entertainment to make up for the effort of coming and most importantly I would retain my sanity.

I have a faint fear though that a rebellion on the most massive scale will be perpetrated on me. After all which kid has ever done what her parent truly wanted.