Power Play and Indian Weddings

We are taught right at the onset of our learning about wedding as a concept, that this alliance is a power play. One is above and the other is under. One is essentially the underdog, and the other one is bound to have the upper hand in this relationship. The burlesque gameplay ensues on the eve of the wedding, when the bride steps into the groom’s house! There are wedding games. ‘Games’ at first sounded fun to me, like the hide and seek, or the ring a ring a roses. I grew up to find out that the game wasn't meant to be as innocuous as it sounded. It was shrewd and a pure example of a pervert human brain. Like the one in which a ring is submerged in a bowl full of petals. Whosoever finds the ring sooner, gets to dominate the household. And if you lose, you are doomed for life. This constant drilling in idea, that the alliance is going to be a struggle, a tug of war, where either you win over him, or he wins over you.

They do it tirelessly over and over, in every wedding. For bad or for worse, this trend survives!

This is not the only stale bite that you get of the big wedding cake. Right after the ‘feras’, the father of the holy bride, hands over his daughter to the groom. And we call this ‘donation of daughter’. Can a daughter be really given like elms to the groom? While the bride is reduced to a substance, she retains her position as worse than that begging, seeking groom, looking up to his wife as a booty.

If you have heard the concept of ‘the big fat Indian wedding’, you should watch it personally. You will get a glimpse of our glorious hypocrisy. The couple might hail from a middle class, but the parents of the girl will throw a big, fat lavish wedding, that sucks every little penny that the parents of that girl might have saved so far. We put up a show to live the glorious past! we put everything on stake for it! We might not have it, but we shall fake it, till we lose it all. While most honorable of men have started taking initiative of sharing the cost, there is no change in the mass unconsciousness.

Then there is a big list of good omens, and bad omens attached to our wedding ceremonies, which might cause you a jaw drop, if you are are an outsider. We look for symbolism in nearly everything. If the two wooden logs hit each other, there will be a lot of clashes in your marital life. If you kick that kalash (bowl) of rice on the doorstep before entering the house, it will bring prosperity in the groom’s household. I would rather respect a thing that I eat, than kicking it out for prosperity. And then the best of it, which I personally love the most J  . A bride, while bidding adieu to her parental home, throws rice backwards in the air, to return all the favours her parents extended to her. A paying back of all the food she had in their home. It is probably the best way to pay back the love you receive. 

This, and a lot of other reasons push me to elope, than getting married in a traditional way. I somehow wish to dodge these traditions of a jerkwater town and escape them all. No matter how many books you read, what qualifications you attain, if you can't see the insensibility in trends like these, you are as bad as a poor uneducated grown up, of unfortunate circumstances. I have been pretty bad with the game ‘when in Rome, do as Romans do’, through and through. And I mock the imbecility in face.