As per Suhail’s wishes, I shall be posting some of my older material on this blog from time to time. Here is my account of an Indian wedding—my own that is. It’s quite long (weddings usually are)—-comments are welcome —-and asked for ! This was written in 2002.

When I was young, or not so young, I used to ask my father and my mother to tell me about their wedding. They didn’t like to do it too much claiming that they had forgotten. I now realize that maybe the truth was that they wanted to forget!

Leaving that aside, the thing is that I am fascinated by weddings. This fascination was not just about the pomp and the grandeur of an Indian wedding. Very simply, I wanted to be the groom. Not because the brides caught my fancy (well to be honest sometimes they did!). It was because I wanted to be at the center of attraction, the cynosure of all eyes. Everybody fretted and fussed over the groom, for a few days at least everyone was there to attend to him and indulge his whims. He got the first choice, the most attention. Later I learnt that’s the same treatment is given to death row inmates an hour before their execution. But as I said, I came to know that later, much later!

So I decided to get married. How I met my wife-to-be and what happened before the wedding isn’t relevant. Or would take quite a few more pages.

In short, it was what is known as a “love marriage”. And no it wasn’t one of those pansy “arranged-cum-love marriages”. What’s an “arranged-cum-love-marriage” anyway? I mean isn’t it an oxymoron? It just means you can’t get a girl for yourself and your parents have to step in. And you are too ashamed to accept it and like to put a veneer of “love” to cover it. Let’s face it…. arranged marriage is all about the BBB factor: the Bigger and Better Bet. Guys go for the prettiest Aishwarya look-alike they can find while girls go for Mr. Moneybags. After all, that’s all you can judge before an arranged marriage. And oh yes the Hindi filmi criteria of “khandan”.. quite forgot that. If richer get the prettier, where’s the love? And when you start something on the basis of such corporeal considerations, how does “love” ever grow? I also find the term “love marriage” rather curious. It precludes “arranged” marriages from having “love” in it!

Enough of digressions! So I came to India in December to get married. I got down from the plane and immediately I felt different. There was my would-be wife, her parents and her brother standing to receive me with a bouquet of flowers! Now in all my life no one has ever given me flowers. And here I was, coming down from the plane and being greeted with a full bouquet. Oh the importance!

It was pretty soon that I realized that things were going to be very different from now on. For one, my mother kept on repeating that I was going to become someone else’s. And that my loyalties would change blah blah.

Of course Ma wanted to be reassured that my loyalties to her were NOT going to change. That I was going to still be mama’s boy and that I should always remember who brought me up. Needless to say, I hugged her … “Oh Ma of course I am still your baby ”.

The fact was that the wedding was not yet finished and there was no denying that I couldn’t piss her off at this stage. Or get her overtly sentimental. She is the main organizer around the house. My dad and I are no good at the stuff.

God knows why people think that daughters-in-laws make the son become detached from his parents. Well perhaps they do sometimes. But in my case there wasn’t much to worry about. I was already sufficiently detached. So my parents knew there wasn’t much to blame anyone else for. I had done pretty much and said everything there was to be said before I got married. So if anything, I was going to improve and Mita, my wife, would get the credit.

The preparations started. Being a lazy guy, I let my mother do most of the work. After all, I was her only child. So I did not want to deprive her of the happiness of arranging everything herself. That would have been a most selfish thing to do. So I profitably used whatever time I could get to spend with my to-be-wife and to be generally up to “no good”.

But there was something I could not avoid. And that was the shopping. Shopping is something that has always been a pain even in the best of times. It’s even less fun when your in-laws take you our for shopping. Cause they are buying you stuff…and that’s always deeply embarrassing. Plus you don’t know what to say. When they say: “What type of shoes would you like to buy” you are acutely conscious of price tags. And you can’t even look at the tags in front of them. They will think you are going to buy the most expensive thing around on their tab. You can’t even go for the cheapest thing around cause you will have to wear it ultimately. If you don’t wear it then they will think that you are not “satisfied”. You are damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

As if that wasn’t enough, my in-laws took me shopping with a distant relative of theirs who was their version of a wedding planner. Jennifer Lopez he was not! I remember him going to one shop and telling the guy who brings out the clothes: “ Bring out the best stuff you have, our son-in-law wants only the very best ”. Yikes! That was the last thing I wanted to hear. And all I could think of was when this ordeal was going to end.

And when our family did the shopping Ma took over. She made us hotfoot all over Calcutta looking for better deals. So we were going to the furthest corners of Calcutta, the seedy by lanes, the forgotten New Market alleys. And while mother-in-law and daughter-in-law bonded, I kept looking at paint dry on walls.

My parents had done something far before I had come. That is they had given out invitations. My dad (like me) likes to set trends. When his father died, he set a trend by not shaving off his hair. As you might have guessed, he doesn’t believe in anything. Including the fact that I am his son!

This time around, my dad decided to set another precedent. He decided not to personally go to everyone’s place and invite him or her (instead he called them). Going personally to people’s houses and inviting them was a fine thing to do in those days when men and women had nothing better to do than eat paan and five course meals. But nowadays it plain and simple makes no sense. None at all. So baba decided to dispense with it.

He compromised a bit however and went only to people who were “senior” to him. Baba, being no spring chicken, didn’t have too many houses to go to as most people older than him in our family had already gone on to greener pastures. Even then some people got socially pissed off with baba because he had not “personally” gone to their houses and invited them. Come on I don’t get what the big deal is. Why wont just a phone call do? After all if you are invited what do you care how you were invited? It’s just some ego trip thing. People believe that just because baba’s son is getting married, baba should be obligated to them. Ergo he should come to their place and request them to come and that will give them some sort of weird trip. Ma had a good explanation: it’s because people love us so much that they want us to visit them at their place. And when we don’t visit, this loving people get upset that their love wasn’t reciprocated. And their tongue starts wagging. Rather poisonously.You get the drift.

Then before the wedding you have the Bengali tradition of “totto sajano”. That is taking gifts and packing them in such a pretty way that you don’t want to open the wrapper. A mountain of wasted effort. But then again so is marriage!

It’s rather fun however especially since I wasn’t doing it. My aunts did it interspersing their efforts with attempts to pull my leg. It’s all in the game and I took it gamely. Except that I have heard these same gags like millions of times. And such lame ass too. Chillers like “ Oh thinking about your wife”. Yeah what do you want me to think about? You? Of course I am thinking about my wife. What’s their problem? I know they are trying to be friendly. But somehow when you are missing your wife (you are not supposed to see her for a few days before the marriage or something to that effect) its not exactly what you like to hear.

Then the day of the marriage. And then I realized that this wasn’t a question of the groom being important. It was a matter of being made the center of a huge joke. It was some sort of Govinda comedy in which nothing made sense. Except that everyone (except the people who were running from pillar to post) were enjoying it. It was one enormous Chinese water torture spread over a day.

For starters, I had to wake up at the crack of dawn. Ostensibly to taste some curd. By tasting that curd, I was going to be paying tribute to my ancestors. Who the hell thought of this anyway? I did no such thing. Woke up pretty late, had a dash of curd. According to custom I wasn’t supposed to eat for the day but Geneva Conventions forbids POWs from being deprived of 2000 calories a day. So I ate naturally.

There was a guy doing something called a nannimukh. It seemed sort of fun except that the mantras seemed to be like parameterized functions. The same thing being “called” with different names of gods.

There were a bevy of fruits all spread out with a prominence of bananas. Just an observation.

After that ceremony was the “gaaye holud” ceremony. This was the strip tease show where I would have to stand bare-torso in front of a gaggle of middle-aged women (aunts and neighbors) while I was smeared with turmeric and then bathed. It was supposed to be done under the cool shade of some tree but try to find a tree in Calcutta. And I wasn’t going to stand Salman Khan style under some tree while someone poured water down my spine. This was my marriage, not some public spectacle. Plus I don’t really have the figure to display my torso, a Greek god I am not by any means! So I stood in the balcony while four banana leaves representing 4 trees were placed at 4 corners. Thus in the middle of this sparse vegetation and covering my torso with a towel, I was smeared with garlic. While the cameramen and video photographers made sure that this moment of embarrassment was enshrined forever.

After that exercise in embarrassment was over, there was not much to do for the time being. The house was full of people all busy. Except me. I knew it was going to be a long night (Nah not what you are thinking!). So I took this time to catch forty winks. The ceremony was in the evening with the actual Hindu ceremony sometime at 9:30. But the preparations were in full swing. I was going to wear dhoti- the traditional Bengali groom dress. Except that I have always found that the dhoti reveals more than it conceals. Plus it is held up by a wonder of knot tying. One false move, and you were likely to be “exposed” and that too on the biggest night of your life. To compound problems, I did not know the mystery of tying the mysterious dhoti. So if the curtains came “down” not only would I be in my bare essentials I would also have to wait for someone else to tie it for me. In short a potential nightmare just waiting to happen with one wrong move.

In days of yore, the dhoti would be tied with much fanfare by the barber. This barber is a part of traditional Bengali weddings. There are supposed to be two of them—one from each side. In the olden days, people had to go long distances to get married. After such a long journey you needed someone to freshen the groom, give him a shave, make him look decent. So a barber was a necessity. Nowadays he exists as a relic of the past. I have mentioned before my Dad’s courageous Raja Rammohan Ray style departures from tradition. Therefore he took the bold step of having no barber from our side. Maybe he didn’t shake the structure of Bengali society with this one, but it surely saved us from having one more non-entity to “tip”. The downside of this was my dad and my uncle had to tie up my dhoti.

And there is another bit of fun in Bengali weddings. For some strange reason, you have to change everything once you go to the girl’s house. And that includes changing dhoti. Traditionally it is something that is more or less done in front of everything with some thin piece of cloth separating the hero from the ogling masses. Something like the gossamer white sari that covers the heroine in the Hindi film classic “rain” seduction song! I had made it clear that I was not going to put up with that public disrobing. I needed room and personal space to change. Except that someone had to be with me while I changed. To change dhotis that is! So even while the dhoti was being tied, I knew I would have to take it off in a less than perfect environment. Because Hindu wedding halls don’t have a designated changing room, everything gets improvised.

The silk “tosor” kurta I wore (called Punjabi for some strange reason in Bengali) felt like I was wearing a newspaper, it was hot and uncomfortable. On top of that someone came and put a decoration of “chandan” on my forehead while I had to hold still. I felt like a vase being painted. I also felt like a pansy. Then if that was not enough, there is the “topor” the cool headgear of groom that looks like the proverbial dunce’s cap. Thus bedecked I waited for the car to come and take me away. Soon Mita’s uncle came as the representative of the bride’s side to take me to the wedding hall. There was the blowing of conch shells and I was given a send-off by a huge thing being touched to my head 3 times. Displacing my headgear in the process. Lots of photos. Lots of smiles. Please look this way. Yes over here hold these flowers. Yes look this way. Light reflecting off your specs. Just roll your eyes…yes just right! The evening was off to a flying start.
The car was bedecked with flowers. I had a tough time getting into the car. And before that the priest from our side was asking me to do some sort of Fred Astaire foot shuffling just before I left for good luck or something. Crazy! My arrival in the bride’s house was greeted by another round of conch blowing. Some of her sisters put a rose in my hand. I was again hit on the head by a similar object, as I had been when I was leaving. Twice.

It seems that the first time it hadn’t been caught by the video camera guys. I was obsessed with my dhoti I could just feel that one wrong tug and I would be history. I moved very slowly taking care of my steps. And with wires running around everywhere I was doing the exactly the right thing. Except my speed at walking might have made my new relatives wonder whether I was a “special” boy. Even now I heard they can’t decide.

I was escorted and asked to sit on a throne. I felt like a king. No not really. Actually, I felt like a fool with the cameramen making me move my face every angle. Focussing, lighting me from different angles. If that was not enough, strange people whom I have never seen before (and unlikely to see again) were coming and introducing them to me. To be honest, everyone looked the same . I smiled stupidly at them and muttered something inane like “Oh Mita has told me about you”. Of course she hasn’t. Mita’s sisters and friends…. there were a lot of them. Of different ages. I couldn’t look at them too close for the sake of decency. No one likes it if the groom is ogling at other girls. But you know me. So I convinced myself these girls were actually guys and looked at them with the same impersonal aura of boredom as I would if they were of the same gender as I am. They perhaps thought I was being rude. Couldn’t be helped. The flip side would be that if I looked at them the way I usually look at ladies their age, they would think I am a letch. Which in a way is closer to the truth, but then again who said I cared a rat’s ass about truthfulness. One thing I couldn’t help noticing, my wife’s sister’s ages had a wide distribution. As a friend of mine told me: That’s a good investment for the future. You get my drift right?

Soon it was time for the phase 1 of the wedding. That’s the ashirbaad or blessing. It’s the time when people from the opposite sides in separate rooms bless the bride and the groom. The way this works is that the guy who is blessing (the blessor) touches your (blessee)’s head with some grass and stuff (not that “grass” the one that grows from the ground and which cows eat) while you touch their feet in a gesture of obeisance. Very empowering isn’t it? But the good thing is you get goodies with it. Which is a big thing for the groom, as most people seem to think its fine to buy gifts for the bride but not for the groom. Hello! There is another person getting married too !!! I mean if women are equal to men then why not have the same principle be carried over with regard to the disbursement of gifts? Why the sexism here eh? This had been an issue that had bothered me ever since I saw my uncle getting married when I was ten years old. And I noticed that he hardly got nothing for himself in comparison to what my aunt got. Though really I didn’t mind it too much now… as long as one of us got the presents it stayed in the “family”. As you can see dear readers, I had already been “broken in ” as horses are and become quite house-trained. So much so that my wife getting gifts and not me didn’t really hurt as much as I thought it would. [ Incidentally to my in-laws reading this I am very happy at the gifts I got. No, I am not an ungrateful ******..I am just saying this to make a point about the “relative” skewed way people give gifts]

Now during the ashirbaad you have to take off your shoes. Just like in any other Hindu religious ceremony…wearing shoes isn’t really the sartorial style of choice . Unfortunately, no doubt influenced by Hindi film “family” movies (which are nothing but elaborate wedding videos of nice looking people with no problems in the world other than “love” ), people have stumbled upon this irritating tradition of stealing the groom’s shoes. The tradition is that the groom is supposed to be teased and then asked to pay his in-laws to get his shoes back.

In times when the grooms were milking the brides dry with their dowry demands, perhaps there was some poetic justice in this. Now it makes no sense. But then again I wouldn’t be doing a traditional marriage if I skip these traditions. My only beef is that this isn’t even a Bengali tradition but more a tradition inspired by Punjabi weddings. And this stealing of this shoe is supposed to be fun when there are lots of young people on both sides of the family. Cause such a thing breaks the ice especially between nubile nymphets and eager dudes on either side. In my case, there wasn’t anyone young from my side. Hence the shoe stealing was a damp squib.

Even then the shoes are supposed to be stolen when the wedding is in progress, not before it has even started. The people who did it (little kids really) didn’t know better and did it pre-maturely, for which they were suitably chastised and asked to return the shoes. Of course the impression that my would be in-laws possibly got was that I am a mean-minded ogre who didn’t like fun and ribbing. Which really isn’t far off the mark. But that’s the not the interface I wanted to present on this very special day of my life. The shoe episode left the younger generation of my in-laws sullen and perhaps a bit more in awe/fear/loathing of me than I deserved.

After the ashirbaad was the start of the wedding. My nightmare begun, as now I had to change into their clothes. Here again in deference to my wishes for personal space I was taken to a room next to the kitchen that was being used as a storeroom. Then the barber from the bride’s side changed dhotis. In case people are shocked, I did keep my essentials on though theoretically you are not supposed to even have a “stitch” on your body ( The dhoti and the thin cloth on your body don’t have any stitches on them ). Fat chance…the idiot who came up with not a stitch on your body must have had a severe case of jock itch himself. Ewwwww !

First the groom stands and the wife comes up to him with a leaf covering her face. This is to pay lip service to the tradition that the groom and the bride are supposed to be meeting for the first time in the wedding hall. Hence this is what is known as “subho-drishti” which would have as a rough translation : “pleasing vision”. Though I am sure when people actually did see each other for the first time seconds before getting married, it might not have been pleasing for most of them.

Before the bride brings down the leaf covering her face, the bride circles the groom seven times. Which considering my girth must have been like walking around the outside track of an athletics field! It seems only in Brahmin (high caste) weddings are the bride and the groom both supposed to go around the fire. For us “lowly” castes circling the groom is considered equivalent. After the 1600 m walk the bride stops, takes away the leaf while for some strange reason a white cloth is held aloft over the groom and bride’s head. And then the bride and the groom exchange garlands while the cameras click away. Once for the wedding and several times for each person with a camera! To make the confusion even more confounded, people keep on shouting as to what is the “right” way to exchange garlands. Of course the barber is present there to add his unique touch to the proceedings. He talked in rhyme and I really don’t remember much of what he said except that most people were laughing out of courtesy. How do I know? It’s the same tone I get when I make jokes myself or pass a witty comment.

Then the ceremony in front of the fire started. The kernel of the wedding . First up one of the priests thought I was an extra from the Bolshoi Ballet troupe because he said I should sit cross legged and contrive to keep my toe in such a way that only my toe touched the ground and nothing else. On top of that my dhoti had started moving up my thighs showing more skin that I thought was proper or I could afford to show. Adding to that, the priest was chanting mantras under his breath that made no sense and I don’t think he himself knew what he was saying. This was supposed to be a solemn occasion. But how could I keep myself from laughing? The priest got the name of my father wrong, my name he got wrong several times and throughout the ceremony he got my wife’s name wrong consistently. And my wife’s name is just 4 letters! So as far as the gods were concerned, someone else’s sons (the priest gave different names to me each time he came to my name: Anirban, Archisman et all) got married to some other lady (called Mitarani).

The priest tied the knot . This means tying the thin fabric that covered my torso to my wife’s sari. I was now officially a bull tethered to the pole.

Then the weird stunt where in you are supposed to put sindoor (vermilion) on your wife’s forehead with a blunt instrument that looked more like a murder weapon than something to apply sindoor. The catch is you are not supposed to look at your wife when you do it . While taking this “shot in the dark” you are supposed to, at the same time, pull a cloth over her head signifying that from now on you take responsibility of her. Finally at the end you stand up, hold your wife from the back and both of you pour flattened rice into the fire. Don’t ask me why, its all in the book. When everything finished, it was 10 at night. Photo ops galore after that standing with each subset of relatives you could think of. It was then that I realized I was damn hungry. For food that is.

I normally don’t sit in the last batch of a wedding. It’s the time when there is more gravy then pieces of meat, the pieces of fish are the broken ones and the predominant sound you hear when you ask for second servings is the unmistakable clang of a spoon scraping the bottom of the pot. Now the wedding was over and I was coming to understand that my place in the sun was also a thing of the past. Like an old film star whose time has passed…I was now becoming one of the boys. My dad told me that during your own wedding, food is the last thing on your mind. For me that was hardly so.

After the wedding is the tradition in which people are supposed to not let the newly wed sleep. The younger generation of in-laws no doubt licking their wounds after the shoe incident earlier in the evening dozed off to sleep without bothering me. My wife’s friends asked me to sing. But there wasn’t much cajoling and so I wasn’t going to sing unless I was really cajoled. After all Kumar Sanu doesn’t sing if you tell him once. Well just as I thought I was going to sing, they fell asleep. And I didn’t want to wake them up as well as the rest of the others. It was a nice opportunity for both of us to catch some sleep..my poor wife had been suffering even more than me cause her rituals are more elaborate. Now was the best time for us to sleep. Except for a minor technicality: everybody was asleep, there wasn’t any room for us. And I do need my room baby!

Ultimately, late late at night we did get a place to rest our head. The story stops there…I aint going to say more !!!!

Now reflections. What one carries with him once the thing is over. Well really it wasn’t over yet, there would be some ceremonies next day, and lot of misty-eyed weeping during the farewell ..[And my younger in-laws had such a bad impression of me they didn’t even ask me for the money they are supposed to get for keeping the groom up all night which in any case they didn’t. So I had to search them out and give them the money, so that they have fond memories of their “jijaji” at least on the day he got married ].This was followed the next day by the groom’s reception where I wore a shoe two sizes too small and the fruit salad ran out by the time…well long story!

As I said what any shrink will tell you is that the important thing is what I got out of the experience. Firstly a marriage ceremony is so lengthy and ends up being such torture that no one in their right mind would ever get married twice. That’s the problem with Christian marriages: they are too small and painless. Hence the high divorce rate in Western countries. Over here we have perfected a marriage technique so that the groom over and over again is reminded of his responsibilities. He is made to sit in revealing clothing so that people can see he is more or less physically ok. His suppleness is tested by the ballerina toes, his intuition by putting the vermilion without looking at the bride, how easily he can part with cash by all the tips he has to give to all and sundry, and in sum his patience is tested all throughout. The upshot is you would never again want to go through with this

As for the importance I got , like all fame, it’s all ephemeral. No matter how much I disliked being the center of attraction, it felt a whole lot worse when everything was over and I went back to being my regular Joe once again.

But no that day did change me in a way. It was that day which made me the most important person in my wife’s life. And that’s what made it worth the while. No matter how insignificant I may be, no matter how many regret letters I get from jobs and flames from my advisor, no matter how fat I am and how many consecutive zeroes I get while batting there is one person to whom I will always be number one. Once the music dies, the glitter of ornaments vanish into the night and the flowers wither away,that is the only feeling that remains.

Another turning point
A fork stuck in the road
Time grabs you by the wrist
Directs you where to go
So make the best of this test
And don’t ask why
It’s not a question
But a lesson learned in time
For what it’s worth
It was worth all the while
It’s something unpredictable
But in the end is right
I hope you had the time of your life