Just over a month ago, I flew back to the US after what was
a fun-filled trip back home to India. Every time I return to Chennai on
vacation, I find that I’m the center of attention within my family circles, for
obvious reasons. “Krish…. Its been so long! You’ve lost so much weight… have
you been eating at all?!”. To say that this trip was no exception would be an
understatement; I was going to get hitched. Or as Pammi (never one to forgo
an opportunity to tease) ceaselessly kept reminding me, I was attending my “life-is-over
event”.
We landed in Madras on the early hours of May 1st
(strongly coincident with the arrival of the hottest period of
summer) to a rousing reception at the airport. Our parents had arrived
nice and early to receive us at 4 am (yes, 4 am!) in the morning. This
was nothing new to either of us; indeed, my parents had come to the airport to
receive me during each one of my previous four trips back home at weird hours
of the night. What was new, however, was
the home-made gulab-jamun, an
on-the-spot-welcome coffee, and the exchange of small fab-India merchandise
gift bags. In any event, these scenes set the tone for the pampering (no
complaints whatsoever!) that was to come during the next month or so.
To try and detail the events and experiences of the entire
month in one blog would be a futile attempt. I’ll therefore restrict this piece
to the wedding itself, and the days that led up to it. This in itself can be a
voluminous amount of detail; even as I think about all that happened, I
realize that it is quantitatively overwhelming. So rather than provide a long,
drawn-out chronological account, I have settled on a slightly different approach.
One that I think better captures the ‘hodge-podge’ or, as we at home like to
call it, the ‘masala’ that typically goes into Indian weddings. Having made a
mental list of these “ingredients”, I then simply list and tick them off one by
one below as either having been an integral part of, or having not featured in our wedding. I speculate, even surmise that a reader who is only
all-too-familiar with these ingredients might initially feel that such a format
may be quite redundant, even boring. I can only remind such individuals
that no Indian wedding (not even the
most traditionally orthodox ones) is short of a few surprises… moments of humor…
excitement… anomalies. So read on, and you will not be disappointed! In any event, I suppose you know you’re
part of an Indian wedding, or events leading up to it when…
(1)
People
all around (relatives, friends, folks you’ve never met before…) work their
socks off to organize the event(s), while the bride and groom get royal
treatment [After initial offers to help in preparations and proceedings
fell on deaf ears, I think it’ll be safe to say that I eventually settled for basking in the limelight,
standing back, and watching the action unfold]
(2)
You
get to meet/ hangout with four or more generations of family members during the
ceremonies… [Box well-and-truly ticked. While nephews and nieces ran amok,
grandparents and granduncles/ aunts took their traditionally-allocated,
front-row VIP seats at the wedding hall]
(3)
…but
also meet several people whom you’ve barely spoken a word to before [At the
end of the day’s ceremonies, particularly after the evening reception, our jaws
started to hurt on account of having said “Hello! How are you!?” around 800
times in total, and between 500-600 times to people whom we’d never set eyes on
before]
(4)
You
get to see kids running riot and parents (just for once!) not bothering to stop
them [As bride and groom, we were practically given press-box tickets to
watch the action unfold, as Pammi’s nieces converted our wedding-hall podium
into a virtual playground. To use sporting terminology, quite literally a
case of the stage being set for the next generation of stars to take over]
(5)
As the
groom, you get to face the ignominy of defeat when your shoes are stolen and stashed
away by your sister(s)-in-law [What’s more, they get to ask you for money
in return for access to your shoes. Quite the supply-and-demand game. Only
here, they forgot/ didn’t know they were dealing with a spoil-sport
brother-in-law-to-be who decided to enter the reception hall wearing his dad’s spare
shoes. Where there is supply, there is no demand and the market ceases to
function]
(6)
As the
bride, you spend hours in the salon having make-up and facials done [Only
here, it wasn’t just Pammi. In typically grandiose fashion, my mom had booked
an entire Salon for an entire day, with food and refreshments organized
in-house. We trooped in at various times of the day and got whatever we wanted
done. Having never experienced a body-massage before, I must say that it was a
thoroughly enjoyable experience. On reflection, it was probably a colossal,
capitalistic expenditure that could have easily been toned down]
(7)
The
groom and bride play a game of garland-throwing [A highly entertaining,
goal-scoring tie that ended two apiece]
(8)
The
odd celebrity, whom you had no idea was part of the guest-list, stops by to say
hello [Chennai’s legendary dramatist and comedy script writer, ‘Crazy’
Mohan graced our particular occasion; he arrived 15 minutes before the
stipulated starting-time of our evening reception. We got to spend five-ten
minutes taking photos and hobnobbing with him, but wait… there was someone
missing. She was still preoccupied with powdering
her nose back-stage, detained by her stylists. For the rest of our time in Chennai, Pammi didn’t hide
her disappointment at having missed out on meeting him]
(9)
The
groom and his
would-be brother(s)-in-law start being chummy, start getting to know each other, and share a drink or two [Only here, I’d already
known him for just over a decade. Although we couldn’t find a slot before the
day of the wedding itself, Harish and I converted his terrace into a virtual
watering-hole a couple of days after the wedding, stashing and polishing off a
few cold ones. When we became close friends during undergrad, we could scarcely
have imagined that 12 years on, I’d
be playing Harry Potter and he Ron
Weasley. Weirdly enough, Harish (a.k.a. Bala) more closely resembles Harry
Potter in appearance than anyone I know! Its almost uncanny… he even bears a
lightning-shaped scar on his forehead]
(10)
Although
everyone puts in a shift during prep-week, there is usually one individual who
runs the show, barks out orders and instructions, the “go-to person” [I’d
gotten the feeling that since taking over the reigns of my grandfather’s tamil magazine
(Bharathan publications), my mom’s already impressive energy-levels had gone up
several notches. Nowhere was that more evident than during the days leading up
to the 8th; She was the Zinedine Zidane of team KB-Nagar, dictating
the pace and detail that went into the preparations. A true midfield
maestro, the orchestrator. Even maestros need a strong support-cast. Zidane had
Henry, Djorkaeff, Desailly, Deschamps et al. Amma had my dad, uncles and aunts,
and all the rest of her family. Notably, my sister Gowri ably partnered her in
midfield]
(11)
Cliques
of adults get together to play card-games, and there’s plenty of money involved
[During South Indian weddings, family members traditionally gather round,
spread a huge dhoti to form a make-shift table, and start playing cards.
Often-at-times, a whiskey-&-soda co-accompanies, even adds fuel to such proceedings.
I suppose it’s a sign of the fast-paced, frantic world that we live in these
days that I saw none of that, with people being far too busy in prep work to
stop, take a breather, and deal out a deck or two. The only card-games I saw/
got involved in were games of UNO orchestrated by my 12-year-old cousin Sankalp]
(12)
There’s
money involved period [A garland of currency notes… ‘nuf said!]
(13)
There’s
food to feed an entire army [Other than blessing the wedding couple, lunch
and dinner are the most important things on the agenda for the vast majority of
people who attend. As is typical of the bride and the groom, Pammi and I had
had a major say on the various items that constituted the menu, with decisions
having been made well in advance. Yet we were among those that probably did the
least justice to it, not least because we’d reached points of exhaustion from
the ceremonies]
(14) The rituals, a monotonous recital of mostly unfathomable manthras with a priest while sitting around a giant homam or fire, last for three days or so [There was a small fire, but no giant homam. There were rituals, but there was no elaborate schedule. There were manthras, but they (every line) were translated into layperson language. There was also Mr. Arul Mozhi, the Arya Samaj priest. Our rituals, constricted into a two-hour window on the morning of D-day (May 8th ) were a platform for Mr. Mozhi to take center-stage, and take it he did. Every recital was followed by a hilarious attempt at drawing parallels between the strength of a marital relationship, the will of the gods, and the forces of nature. To be fair, at no stage did I feel that Mr. Mozhi went out of his way to impose his philosophies on us. Yet I find it absurd that in general, Hindus proclaim their religion as catering more towards scientific rationale than any other religion, based purely on its “tolerance” and “reverence” for nature. They seem to conveniently overlook that some of the very fundamentals of Hinduism – etched in the creation of multiple, independent, non-transitional life-forms (fish, turtle, wild-boar, lion, man) all from a single all-mighty (Vishnu) – is strongly concordant with conservative/creationist rather than liberal-Darwinian/evolutionary schools of thought. Out of the corner of one eye, I noticed Pammi grinning from ear-to-ear. Out of the other, I picked out Harish eating puffed rice in the background, suppressing a yawn that would have blatantly given away his boredom. I chuckled before continuing to recite]
(15)
There’s
that magic moment when you know that everyone present, 300-strong, suddenly
switches on and zeroes in…. [Most of them are thinking the same
thing – “there ain’t no turnin’ back now”]
(16) …while
others who are absent are sorely missed [We got to spend some quality post-wedding time with them...]
(17)
The
wedding couple are constantly asked to pose for the cameras [Overall,
though, I got the feeling that wedding photography had definitely changed for
the better. Aside from the quality and quantity of the pictures themselves,
they captured many candid moments of casual conversation. We were
impressed]
(18)
As an
attendee with a son or daughter in their mid-20s, you face a constant barrage of
enquiries about their marriage prospects [“How old is your daughter, and
what is she doing currently?” “Is your son in America, a software engineer
(i.e. earning $80,000 - $100,000 PA)?” Aside from the fact that such exchanges
occur in the first place, I find it highly amusing that the most relevant
question “Has (s)he decided/ hinted at getting married?” is often conveniently
put into the back-burner]
(19)
The
nights that lead up to the big day are filled with drinking sessions with your siblings
and cousins...
[The crowning glory of these nights was the
evening of May 6th when the youth decided we “wanted out” and threw
ourselves an open-air party at Gandhinagar Club. The booze flowed]
(20) …only for that lot to disappear and have their own, private party on the evening of the wedding itself [They arrived right at the end of the evening, buzzed to a person, chanting for my mom to blow the final whistle. She obliged. A fitting way to draw the curtains on what had been an unforgettable eight days!]
