The Big Fat Great Indian Wedding

If you have ever been a part of an Indian wedding or more precisely a North Indian wedding, then you know what I am talking about!

Fresh from a week long mission of my sis-in-law's wedding, the hangover is difficult to get rid off and so is the body ache and sleep. It was a first hand experience on how a simple sequence of functions can turn into a Mission Impossible and the fact that it is an expected "norm" for a marriage to be a management nightmare. In fact, I'd go as far to say that until the things don't get messy and too hot to handle, the environment doesn't feel like that of a marriage. And believe me...that's where all the fun comes from!!

Our Big Fat Great Indian Marriage is like that Chef's special dish whose secret is known to none. I feel the secret ingredient that makes an Indian wedding so unique is the complex mix of colors, joys, sorrows, laughter, smiles and cries in a spicy in a curry of lights and grandeur with a tadka of love of all the well wishers served carefully wrapped in delicate folds of chaos and uncertainty. Well its a formula that's tough to replicate but the real beauty lies in that every wedding can have a different composition of these elements which ultimately determines its unique beauty and flavor.

Being from the bride's party,for us, it was almost a 7 day affair spread across 3 main functions of Sangeet, Sagan / Ring Ceremony and final Wedding with smaller rituals sprinkled throughout and spread across 3 venues in 2 cities in 2 states. Having been passed through this already once, I thought of myself as a seasoned campaigner, but believe me, it took only one so called 'smaller' ceremony to realize that I may have grossly underestimated this mighty animal and hugely overestimated myself . I mean every thing one does during these days seems to have an elaborate process involving a set of steps to start and a different set of steps to end. To complicate things further, the steps may change depending upon who in the family is leading the ceremony.

Add to this the mammoth task of logistics that have to be arranged for each of the functions with a thousand riding conditions - if its for bride you have to do this, if it is for the groom do that, if it is for bride's family only this needs to be done and if its for groom's side, then this plus this but minus that....phhew!!

And I thought doing Engineering and MBA was difficult.

On a serious note...an Indian Wedding is a massively complex management assignment in itself and it really takes all the skills of a CEO to resolve conflicts, manage smaller projects within the big business of wedding and most importantly manage people and their expectations to make it a success. After this wedding, I can surely boast to have graduated to middle management level.

I am seriously amazed at the amount of efforts, energies, monies and emotions spent in making this one event the most successful event of one's lifetime. This holds true for both the bride and groom's side without any bias. What makes it a milestone event is that this one event marks the culmination of years of expectations and aspirations of both side's parents, the bride and groom; and at the same time marks the beginning of another.

I find this paradox really intriguing - the end of one journey sparks the beginning of another one - parents in earlier case and the bridegroom in the latter case. How beautiful it is to see the contrasting emotions on a single stage where parents feel proud, relieved and content at having discharged their biggest responsibility well while the bride and groom feel elated and excited at having embraced the mighty responsibility of  each other's lives for the rest of their lives.

Like all good things end with a bang...all the functions in a Indian Wedding end in song, dance, laughter, lots of sweets and delicious multi-course cuisine. This is the best thing I like about our weddings. A confession - for a fairly wooden legged guy, I danced like hell...at every possible opportunity...well technically what I was doing would be more aptly termed as the throwing of hands and legs...but that's another good thing about it...who cares about your dancing style as long as you're grooving to the beat.

Though I personally feel there's a lot of effort and money spent without reason or rationale but then ain't it the same with a lot of other things we do as a part of our cultural heritage?

So then...till we fix up all such irrationality in all other aspects of our culture and society...I'd say 3 cheers to this glorious event and bless the undying spirit of the people that participate in it.