by Ira Trivedi
♦
On paper, the boy was perfect. He worked in private equity, was Harvard-educated, tall and handsome, and we even had eleven friends in common on Facebook—friends in Boston, New York, Delhi and Mumbai, all the cities that we had both lived in.
I wanted to know how it felt to meet a total stranger with the idea of spending the rest of your life together, how the ‘click’ that Gopalji spoke about happened, what people meant when after twenty meetings, they knew that the twenty-first girl or boy was the ‘one’. A hopeful inner voice of mine urged me to meet him. My main motive for meeting Nakul was to get more insight into the differences between love and arranged marriage for the book. But I was also secretly curious about him being a good match for me and wondered if the arranged marriage process could work for me, especially because I had been fighting more than usual with Vinayak. He wanted to get engaged but I wasn’t sure if he was the right fit for me. If I did break up with Vinayak, I knew I could not bear going through the painful rigmarole of dating for a long while and an arranged marriage seemed like a relatively painless option at this point.
When I had looked at Nakul’s biodata, he seemed to have some of things that I felt Vinayak was lacking. Research tells us that we are more compatible with people with similar life experiences, and Nakul reminded me so much of myself. We had a similar education—both of us had studied in Boston and done our MBAs—we had similar family backgrounds, and had spent our formative years in the US and India. Nakul seemed ideal. Though Gopalji usually discouraged it, I told him that I would meet only Nakul, not his parents or his other family members, because that would be too overwhelming.
When I revealed to my inner circle of friends that I was meeting someone with a view to an arranged marriage, they were not surprised, even though they all knew Vinayak. Many had been through this situation. They were dating men that they liked, but their parents pressured them to meet men that they did. Many would resist, but after a while ended up meeting these men, for no other reason than to placate their parents. One friend had a great relationship, but met a man through her parents, and immediately decided to marry him, because she thought he would make a good husband.
I had advice coming from all directions because everyone that I knew had at some point gone through the arranged marriage process. My friends regaled me with their matrimonial horror stories—a friend of mine had ruined her nuptial chances because she had gone back to the guy’s hotel room after the first meeting. Another had blown it when she introduced a potential to her wayward friends, yet another because she smoked a cigarette. Mansi advised me, ‘Let him make the effort, don’t reveal too much.’
In an unusually bold step, Nakul flew down from Bombay to meet me. We had never even spoken on the phone, chatted, or emailed one another. We had only exchanged SMSs to confirm the time and venue of our meeting. This made me even more uncomfortable, first because of his apparent seriousness, and second because this earnestness further exemplified his good qualities. What if he actually turned out to be the one? Was I ready for this?
Nakul was everything that he promised to be. He was older than I had expected—thirty-six (his biodata had said thirty-four, I guess I had Gopalji to thank for this error) and he was sweet, kind, well-spoken, attentive, curious and funny. We had a lovely time over coffee, and agreed to meet again the following day. Though everything had gone well with Nakul, as the time approached to meet a second time, I did not want to see him again. All my nervous energy of the previous day had coalesced into dullness and other unfamiliar feelings that I could not quite understand. I was still nervous, but not in the fresh, light way of the day before. It didn’t help that a vigilant Gopalji had taken a personal interest in this one and was keeping track of the meetings.
Somehow, something with Nakul seemed to be lacking in my mind. I couldn’t put my finger on it, and I started harping on the smallest things: the elasticity of his socks, the unappealing computer bag that he carried, the unimpressive thickness of his hair. I felt a sinking feeling when I thought about Nakul, so I SMSed Vinayak telling him that I was thinking about him.
Gopalji was unnaturally clear-headed and had a vaunted prescience about these things; he was a matchmaker after all. He had told me to meet Nakul a minimum of three times. After that, he said, I would know. So I did just that.
The buccaneering Nakul flew down again to have dinner with me. As the waiters closed the restaurant, stacking the chairs and rolled the front entrance of the restaurant halfway down, Nakul and I talked about everything under the moon. The conversation was smooth, entertaining, and intelligent, but I felt nothing in my heart, my hands were cold, and a distasteful feeling oppressed me. I have no idea what unspoken covenant had been broken, or what unwritten law of nature had been transgressed, but when he dropped me to the car and said goodbye, I knew that I would never see him again. As he walked away, I only felt sharp relief. I immediately phoned Vinayak and told him that I loved him.
The truth was that it was difficult for me to accept this arranged marriage business, though I strongly wished that, like Mansi, I too could internalize my past calamities and find a way to sink into the ‘comfort’ of arranged marriage. It seemed to be so easy, so straightforward. With economics, social acceptability and background in place, marriage should be easy. I had seen so many of my friends and family, including my parents and sister, meet their spouse in an easy arranged marriage with none of the anxiety and heartburn of dating. It seemed perfect in theory, but the biggest hurdle towards an arranged marriage for me was my own mind.
According to Sudhir Kakar, ‘Arranged marriages work best, and perhaps can only work, if the sexes are kept apart in youth and if marriages take place early, before young men and women have had an opportunity to compare a range of potential partners.’196 Clearly this had not been the case for me. I had plenty, perhaps too much, interaction with the opposite sex so I wasn’t mentally prepared to take on arranged marriage. Maybe if Nakul and I had met through friends, at a bar, or a nightclub, we could have had a perfectly natural, healthy relationship that may even have resulted in marriage. Just like if Vinayak and I had met through an arranged context, I would have rejected him after the first meeting, only based on his biodata, despite him being a lovely partner.
Sometimes I wondered if I had followed Gopalji’s tailor-made format of our parents meeting first, could things have worked out differently for Nakul and me? But then again, I couldn’t even imagine myself in that situation, despite having observed it so many times with Gopalji. Maybe I was being quixotic, but it seemed unnatural to think of marriage as a strategic transaction, or a calculated decision. It seemed stranger to make love to a man that I didn’t really love. I wanted to actually fall in love with a loud bang and have scars and bruises to show for the fall. I wanted to date, to be best friends, to fight, to break up bitterly and to make up even more sweetly, and then one day, when the timing felt right, to get married. Though I had been brought up on a diet of arranged marriage, the later conditioning of my mind towards love and romance was much stronger than I had ever imagined. The meetings with Nakul had made me feel interminably uneasy and awfully awkward. It was like going on a single date, knowing that your choice would be for life, it was more pressure on the heart than I had ever imagined. Ultimately, an arranged marriage is about marrying a person who has the qualities you could fall in love with. Yet all my dating experiences had told me that love was a nebulous, intangible feeling. You couldn’t put a value on it, and I certainly couldn’t make it happen by matching myself to biodatas customized by Gopalji.
THE BIG FAT INDIAN WEDDING
On the eve of Gandhi Jayanti, a wedding that is a vulgar display of ostentation and wealth, to a degree I would have thought impossible even in a city renowned for its vulgar displays of wealth, is taking place on the outskirts of Delhi. The MC announces that today is an ideal day to get married since the following day, 2 October, is the birthday of the Father of our Nation. He isn’t being the least
sarcastic or ironic or maybe he sincerely believes that because the visage of the Mahatma adorns all Indian currency notes, including the 1,000 ones, he would have approved of the lakhs of rupees that are being spent on this wedding. In reality, Gandhiji had stated clearly and unequivocally that wedding ceremonies should be austere and focus on sacred rituals and simplicity.
The sangeet is taking place in the upmarket Chattarpur farms area; the theme is Avatar—based on the Hollywood blockbuster. A fifty-foot replica of the Tree of Souls stands in the centre of a ground the size of a football field—it is pretty impressive and I’m certain even James Cameron would find it commendable. Waiters are dressed as members of the Na’vi tribe, and state-of-the-art laser lighting and fog machines create an impression of being in an alternate universe. Cirque du Soleil dancers perform to popular Bollywood tunes before internationally acclaimed DJ Edward Maya takes over for the night. Like the over-applied rouge and glittering ornaments on the women, everything here appears tawdry, bordering on the burlesque.
Undulating patterns of strobe lights and shadows blend spectrally to create random forms. Against this storm of light and sound, young men and women from Delhi’s swish set make small talk at the bar, decked out in jewels, dressed in slinky saris and sparkly lehengas. At one of the four bars, I watch a spectacular extravaganza—Na’vi tribe members ride human beings dressed as dragons and zip to and fro. Next, the 2,000 guests—parents, grandparents, children—watch a glittering Bollywood-esque dance performance that is staged by the bride’s and groom’s friends and family. As I watch, the sister of the bride gyrates with the liquid grace of a professional while a slew of male cousins prance around her. She is dancing to the song of the season, ‘Chikni Chameli’ which translates to ‘Sexy Chameli’, and alludes to a female prostitute named Chameli in another film. The lyrics go something like this:
Come, my evenings are lonely / I will share them with you… / With the fire of my body / I have come to light up cigarettes and joints/ Sexy Chameli has come…
Despite the somewhat risqué lyrics, the song is so popular even small children shimmy to it and mouth its lyrics. The show is impressive and it is apparent that the families and friends have spent weeks, perhaps even months, practicing their moves. The man behind the show is Rajender Masterji, a flamboyantly homosexual man with henna-orange hair, betel-stained teeth, wearing a body-hugging sequinned Lycra kurta and cat’s-eye contact lenses. Masterji, as he is popularly known, is India’s celebrity wedding dance choreographer. He began his career in Mumbai giving dance lessons to aspiring starlets, but today his main line of business is choreographing Bollywood dance sequences for mega-weddings. In the style of Bollywood movies, these dance sequences performed by friends and members of the family usually tell a story with intermittent mini skits narrating the couple’s love story (even if the match is arranged).
It is only in the last few years (five to seven according to different choreographers that I have spoken with) that this Bollywood dance craze has become a standard at Indian weddings. According to Rajender Masterji, a series of hit Bollywood movies, like the blockbusters Dil To Pagal Hai (1997) and Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998) inspired people to stage their own dance performances. The popularity of these dance sequences has spawned an entire industry resulting in the proliferation of choreographers and dance studios that cater only to weddings.
In earlier, simpler times, the days preceding the actual wedding were reserved for auspicious rituals and ceremonies, but now with increasing disposable income and exposure to the West, these same rituals have taken on new forms. Until a decade ago, the sangeet was an innocuous affair, where women of the household got together to sing and dance to traditional folk ballads. Today, the sangeet is an ecstatic, protoplasmic affair straight out of the movies, where friends and family, men and women, children and adults, dance to hip-swinging sequences choreographed to Bollywood songs. Bollywood has invaded all aspects of the Indian wedding. Instead of the saris that her mother wore, today’s bride wears a fancy lehenga inspired by a Bollywood star; wedding decor is inspired by Bollywood film sets, photographers make the bride and groom pose like Bollywood actors and videographers make wedding videos that are mini-Bollywood films, complete with song, dance, and drama. Bollywood celebrities too have capitalized on their popularity in the wedding arena and play a role in the most exorbitant weddings. For the small price of US$750,000 (4.6 crore), Shahrukh Khan, can reportedly be persuaded to make a celebrity appearance at any wedding. There is an industry ‘A-list’ for celebrity appearances, and even B- or C-grade stars have wedding attendance price tags.197
♦
Rohit, my companion for the evening, is most definitely drunk. The cadence of his voice, the slur in his speech, his overly elaborate gestures are definite proof. We engage in some drunken chatter, and although I am a teetotaller, I have consumed a few Red Bulls, and am feeling drunk. Rohit has just returned from a four-day-long ‘youngster’s party’ in Ibiza. He tells me about this latest trend: ‘My friends don’t know most of the people attending their weddings. Even if they want a small, private affair, their parents won’t allow it, it is against social norms. You can’t really get drunk, or have fun with all your aunties and uncles around, so nowadays everyone has a youngster’s party attended only by “young” people, though they are all about thirty years old.’
Rohit now turns philosophical, ‘Most big weddings are shit shows, there are thousands of people. To be honest, it’s vulgar. It’s sad. People want to remember these weddings by how opulent they are, and by going above and beyond the last big wedding. Isn’t timelessness meant to be created by emotions? It seems far removed from what these functions are actually meant to be. A year later, you don’t remember a thing, you just think about the next big party.’
Luckily for Rohit, the next big party is the next day at the mammoth wedding of a real estate baron’s only daughter.
♦
At the entrance to the venue I am greeted by two life-size garlanded elephant sculptures. They are juxtaposed, unexpectedly, against an eerie, blue-eyed mime with his face spray-painted silver (thirty such mime artists have been flown in from France). The venue is so large that a fleet of golf carts is standing by to ferry people to the stage where the bride and groom stand to meet their guests. When I finally enter the actual venue—closer to an arena than a hall, I reel from the sensory overload. At one end, a women’s choir sings devotional bhajans, in another corner, a group of saffron-clad young priests chant sacred mantras, on a balcony a small army of musicians play traditional Carnatic music. There is also a fifty-foot-high wall with four rows of squares. Inside each square sits a musician playing an instrument. It is essentially a band on the wall. Next to these musicians is a bar where a bunch of kids have congregated. A few suited ruffians throw cocktail olives at a man sitting in one of the squares.
The newly-weds stand on a massive stage with octopus-like tentacles reaching up to the ceiling. Hundreds of visitors queue up to wish the couple, present them with gifts, and get photographed with them. There is a row of television screens on each side of the hall in the style of sporting events so that people far away from the stage can witness the activities. The sights and sounds are so overwhelming that all I can do is stare. I make my way to the front of this massive hall. I have to pause and rest in between, partly because this hall is so large, and partly because the sari that I have carelessly tied is threatening to fall off.
The wedding I am attending is typical of a big fat Indian wedding, and is no different from dozens of similar weddings that are taking place all across the country. Only the scale differs. I remember my own sister’s recent wedding reception where a ‘wedding set’ had been constructed on a large barren ground, complete with a giant, wobbly wooden stage on which Anjani and Rahul stood for three hours while guests came and greeted them. The wedding set had various food stations—a Punjabi ‘roadside dhaba’ with a thatched roof, a cowboy bar with waiters wearing cowboy boots and hats, and a seafo
od station with a pile of sand as a makeshift beach. Our wedding planner made sure that we had an elaborate spread of food. I remember her words, ‘The bride’s family has to put up a show, and anyone you have interacted with in your lifetime has to be fed. An Indian wedding is like a mass charity event.’ Except none of the guests that I saw during the course of that long evening struck me as being in the least bit malnourished.
The situation is similar at this big fat Delhi wedding too. I walk to the sprawling banquet featuring a variety of different cuisines—French, Japanese, Thai, Mughlai; a seafood counter featuring lobster and Cambodian basa and a cheese counter with fifty varieties of cheese. The dessert counter has a chocolate fountain and twenty different kinds of comestibles. At the fruit counter people are hoarding fruit, pushing and shoving, and piling their plates high with peaches, strawberries, rambutans, mangosteens, and other varieties of imported fruit. A richly caparisoned lady ploughs through the crowd like a pocket battleship with her infant daughter—a plump child with salon curls and a frothy outfit—in tow. The infant daughter has three maids with her—one holds her bag, another her milk bottle, another the child herself. I look at the Northeastern maid carrying the small child and I wonder what she makes of all this. Her 6,000 a month salary is probably the cost per head at this wedding. She probably has a young child at home and ailing parents back in her village. And then she sees all of this. Enough to drive anyone wild, or at least crazy enough to hoard some fruit for herself.
