Essays

In India, there are certain things which do not change or if they change, they change only to take a more negative shape. This is true about  most of the Indian marriages while leaving some scope for exceptions which are always there in all ventures, good or bad.

With the passage of time, the noisiness and expensiveness of Indian marriages has attained dizzy heights. We might blame the elders for being superstitious, but we fail to realize that any amount of superstitiousness is at least better than vulgarity, obscenity and rowdyism.

Last Sunday, I was invited to the marriage of one of my relatives. I was on the girl's side.

The poor girl had been subjected to horrendous treats of facials, waxings, fruits pastes on the face, Mehandi, powders, chemicals, even petrol which was mixed in the so-called Kali Mehandi and was smeared on her delicate hands, arms, feet and legs. But all were happy and so, I think, I should have no complaint.

The bridegroom arrived very late at night in an expensive car in front of a cavalcade of cars, taxies, and buses and immediately after alighting from the cars, etc., the marriage party with all members drunken up to the neck, raised a hullabaloo reminiscent of the description of Pandemonium in books.

All the ceremonies were held only as a matter of formality as the attention of the members of the marriage party was only towards eating, drinking, dancing, creating the maximum possible noise and such things to assert themselves as belonging to some superior race and the attention of the boy and other members of his family only towards the items of dowry which included a car, a refrigerator, an airconditioner, a rich enclosed amount in cash and jewellery, costly sarees and numerous expensive gadgets.

Moreover demands were raised some tactfully and some shamefacedly, and all these had to be met by the poor girl's parents.

I was shocked to learn that the boy was just a matriculate whose great-grandfathers had been grinded agars by the British government for having betrayed their motherland, while the girl was a postgraduate and well-versed in several skills and was extremely beautiful.

It is almost impossible to describe all the rowdyism at the drinking parties, dinners, and receptions that I witnessed. At least, a highly learned gentleman praised sky high the boy and his parents for their gentleness and above all aristocratic way of life.