Ostentation of exorbitant festivities in weddings

MANJU GUPTA

I gawked at the invitation; a box full of goodies. Besides its primary purpose of divulging the itinerary, it had four treasure chests with jewelled necklaces. The Gayatri mantra played in the background as I examined them. Sadly, I will miss Isha's wedding. Truth be told, I got the card but am not invited. Like most of us, I received the Ambani invitation as a forward from a friend on social media. Various estimates claimed that a single invite was priced at Rs 3 lakh. So, Indians the bar has been raised. I envision scores of lookalike cards and poorly crafted boxes as less endowed countrymen try to emulate their role models.

I wasn’t invited to Deepika's or Priyanka’s wedding bash either. Still, I have attended a fair share of big fat Indian weddings. I admit that I enjoyed some of them. A (north) Indian marriage is quite a spectacle, as people try to outdo each other. I have attended theme weddings, designer and destination weddings (albeit, not offshore!). I have attended classy affairs and ostentatious ones. Some of them were like giant fairs, with elephants and snake charmers, camel rides and folk dancers. Two decades ago, human statues were the rage. Guests would crowd around these humans frozen in various poses and try to catch them move. “Hila, abhi hila” they would chant happily, when they saw it exhale. Mercifully, the trend didn’t last long. I always found the situation hilariously sad. Only in a country as poor and populous as India can you pay someone to stay still. 

I have seen it all. International cuisine and 'branded' food courts, flower girls in traditional attire and skimpily dressed bar girls, gloved waiters and turbaned ‘darbans’, ‘shehnai’ players and Russian dancers,  fountains and fake trees, tents designed to look like the Egyptian pyramids and the White House, the groom arriving in a helicopter, the bride rising above the stage on a crane. Once as I left the venue I noticed there were dancing girls precariously balanced on a high platform above the gate. There is nothing too loud, nothing too absurd. The sky is the limit.

Once on a BBC programme on Indian marriages the host said that sometimes guests leave without meeting the bride and the groom. That is when the oddity of it first sunk in. Most of us go to a wedding to eat, drink and make merry, not bothering to meet those about to get married. So, in this extravagant ‘tamasha’ the most important people are neglected. 

But that is not all. It is also about needless expenditure, colossal wastage and some more far reaching implications. Besides frivolousness, it affects society in a negative way. A father displays the car he has gifted to his daughter. This inspires others to aspire for it, demand it or even mistreat the bride for non compliance. If a gift is intended for the child's comfort, it can be given discreetly. Why this public display of affection? We need to stop using this event as a time to establish our credentials and show some social responsibility.

I would like to believe that it is out of this feeling of social responsibility that my son claims that he will not spend more than a lakh on his wedding. “What about my long awaited destination wedding?” asks his sister. “We will all go to any destination of your choice but not for the wedding,” he replies. “What about friends and relatives?” I ask doubtfully. “I can’t be bothered to waste money thus. Mine will be a simple court marriage,” declares the ‘sonnie’ boy. “So, what do you need the one lakh for,” asks the sister rather acidly. “For a family meal at some fancy restaurant after registration,” pat comes the reply. So, it seems that he has it all figured out. The only hitch is that by the time he reaches the ‘marriageable age’ he might change his mind, give into social pressure. His fiancée might have grown up dreaming of a dream wedding and want to turn it into reality. But it is still heartening that he and his peers think this way. Change begins with a thought and it helps if the thinker of those thoughts is young.

(The writer is a gynaecologist based at Gharaunda)