Lately I have been to a couple of Classic Christian weddings here in the kanyakumari district and I have seen a common touch in all of them. I thought it would be fun to share it along and bring a smile. The wedding season (like summer season, winter season, mating season) is concentrated during the May and December months of the year. The D day starts with the bride and the bridegroom being woken up in the wee hours of morning for getting the preparations done on time. The bride is dragged off to the marriage hall and smeared with all kinds of weird unmatched colors on her face that makes her look twenty years older (the bridegroom has a tough time believing if she was the one betrothed to him) and then all the family’s jewels are hung and nailed on her. And remember the rule – “the more jewels she wears the more prestige and honor for the family”. And then the ground breaking (literally) music of a troop is heard and the bridegroom comes and is welcomed with sandal smearing and rosewater sprinkling. Then the couple walk off to church wearing a heavy yoke of flowers that symbolizes they are captives to each other for the rest of their lives. And after uttering a mouthful of vows that will be broken the very next week of their marriage, they are happily married.
Then they stroll off to the banquet hall where the newlyweds smile all the way with guests pouring in on the stage and giving them all kinds of gifts and small little envelopes with a few bucks tucked away inside. Drops of sweat start appearing all over the couples face and yet they manage to give that never fading smile by wiping them off.
The bridegroom holding an Olympic torch-like bouquet in his hand constantly thinks if he did the right thing getting married. The feast is the awesome part of the wedding with people rushing to grab places and they don’t mind trampling anyone on the run. If you are lucky to get a seat, you seat yourself with a table which is dripping with rice, curry and leftover payasam from the previous person who sat there eating his way to glory. Then you have to swallow faster than you can chew so that the person waiting near you to finish up can sit in your seat and have the same uneasy feeling of being watched while eating as you are. The dessert consists of smashing the banana into a pool of brown and white mixed payasam and slurping it up with your fingers. Oh, and if the liquid drips back to your arms because of gravity, lick it again please. The whole melodrama is enacted again in the evening for the reception.
The frenzy ends with the newlyweds posing for a few more shots – holding hands, hugging, and all to show people who see their albums 10 years later that they were truly in love back then. Whether it’s the hypocritical relatives who smile never-endingly or the noisy children or the music that rips your eardrums apart or the quarrels that breakout for silly customs or the women who come in eye blinding saris and chunks of gold, Marriages are indeed made in heaven, don’t you agree?
The frenzy ends with the newlyweds posing for a few more shots – holding hands, hugging, and all to show people who see their albums 10 years later that they were truly in love back then. Whether it’s the hypocritical relatives who smile never-endingly or the noisy children or the music that rips your eardrums apart or the quarrels that breakout for silly customs or the women who come in eye blinding saris and chunks of gold, Marriages are indeed made in heaven, don’t you agree?
