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It all begins by word of mouth. The daughter or son of so and so is in the marriage market. So word gets around. And then it comes. An avalanche of horoscopes, a host of astrologers, who never agree with their own tribe. And after several eliminations, a few eligible horoscopes are selected. From then on, it really begins, a time of discomfort for the bride and the groom, caught between parents and society.

While mail is exchanged between the parents, the couple in question is usually unaware of what’s happening and who they are going to meet. A day for the meeting is fixed and the girl is coaxed to deck up for the viewing. A most uncomfortable part, especially for the girl who is asked to sing and dance (she may never get to do so after her marriage!) or if she could cook (after all isn’t it a girl’s duty to cook!).

In some cases the parents are forward enough to allow the bride and the groom to talk. While in several cases the parents don’t have the courtesy to leave the room while the boy and girl talked, some are slightly more magnanimous and leave the room just enough for the bride and groom to exchange their names and work places.

“We will write back” says the groom’s retinue. A girl may be rejected if she doesn’t deck up for the viewing or for not falling at their feet, or if the visitors didn’t like the girl’s house, which the groom may get a share of in the future. In case it so happens the girl rejects the groom, she is doomed. Both relatives and friends who were matchmakers wag their tongues saying, “if she rejects such an eligible groom she will never get married.” This throws the girl’s parents to the verge of a nervous breakdown.

However, my parents are lucky they didn’t have to go through the above situation in both cases. (or should I say we were lucky?) Anyway, when my parents were scouting around for an eligible groom, my sister and her friend and colleague decided that they should tie the knot. After several discussions with her sister and brother-in-law, she decided to tell my parents who gladly agreed. And we all breathed a collective sigh of relief.

My parents wrote to the grooms’ parents formally and they met in formal, replete with tradition. This was not what the bride and groom had planned for. They didn’t want any formal “changing of platters”. The platter contains fruit, flowers and sweetmeats along with a wad of notes for the groom’s suit. While the grooms’ parents were held on a leash by the groom and the bride holding the leash on her parents, both sets of parents were in fact at a loss as to what to do next.

The worried parents went about arranging wedding mandaps always thinking what their children would spring on them next. While the bride and the groom went on nit-picking the expenses which weren’t spared, the parents in fear of what people around them would talk, were literally on tenterhooks.

The wedding day dawned bright and clear, with the groom protesting that he wouldn’t bare his chest or wear a dhoti in public. After a lot of coaxing and cajoling, the groom looked slick in a silk dhoti, pinned in all vantage points so that it wouldn’t slip off his frame and covered his upper torso with an “angavastram” (I would call it half a dhoti). The bride resplendent in a fancy silk sari made her appearance devoid of jewelry except for a simple necklace adorning her neck. The formal engagement over, the bride and groom got ready for an evening of hand shakes and smiles, the reception.

The bride again was wearing a silk sari (not the formal Kanchipuram), and a simple gold necklace. Something unheard of in a south Indian (here a Tamil Brahmin) wedding where all the jewellery the parents give is worn by the girl, whether she likes it or not. She also is expected to wear the costliest kanchipuram sari with barely space for color, because the rest is covered in zari.

It so happened that the bride was wearing fewer jewellery than the invitees, that the next day saw them toning down their attire and cutting down on their own jewellery, much to our amusement. In fact there were comments galore on the bride not wearing heavy gold ornaments.

The muhurat usually a three-hour long ritual was reduced by half due to the persistence of the groom, who chanted and chatted with the priest simultaneously. The priest on the other hand was busy fielding calls on his cell phone which was photographed by my husband. It did raise a few laughs when you compared with weddings in the past where the priest didn’t have a bicycle to call his own, but the present day priest makes his rounds in a Maruti and wields a cell phone.

After this the “mangalsutra” was tied and they were pronounced man and wife. In all it was a relatively quick, modern wedding, devoid of “sambandi” fights. Though this simple wedding raised the collective eyebrows of several relatives who were skeptical about the whole thing, was in fact appreciated later by both families. It was also widely spoken about for the next couple of days by the families who were eager to conduct a marriage of similar nature for their own boys and girls. Whether they would really have one such wedding in their families remain to be seen.

“Weddings are planned in heaven” seems a phony phrase to me at times, because they are not even planned by the people who are going to marry in most cases. People around the couple usually make plans for them. In most cases the couples don’t get to choose their partners too. It is the people around them who try to get them to meet.

Even if they happened to like each other on the first sight, it may or may not happen for silly reasons like the bride’s parents unable to provide household necessities like say, a fridge along with a hefty dowry. If the well-educated and employed guy is then rejected by a girl, it is for good reason. If he cannot provide his wife with simple necessities on his own, he is not worth living with.

There may be brickbats for opinions like mine which doesn’t deter me. The wedding of my sister was hassle-free because they were steadfast in their opinions and convinced their parents to have a simple wedding. Times are changing, however, the above facts continue to be true.

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