Holy Matrimony!

My neighbour Nilesh finally took the plunge today…over the hill at 30 and being a ‘good Jain boy’, I am guessing he was already walking the tight rope to the wild side.

It is an interesting exercise to put it mildly…this whole marriage jamboree. The drums and the shehnai were specifically instructed to blare right into the groom’s ear…u know, this one’s for posterity, in case he has a stunted episodic memory…im sure the decibel levels will gong aloud in his eardrums even if he happens to stray with Madame Bellucci a decade down the line. No wonder most Indian marriages are so successful!

Wedding processions quite clearly map out the who's who of the marriage. Needless to say, the groom must have gone bananas to go through a public procession to mark this day in his life. So, lets imagine that the groom is a bunch of bananas. The fruit flies (read relatives) in the first valence band are the siblings and the really close friends. And with every successive valence band, the proximity to the nucleus (read groom) obviously decreases.

The groom's head gear has these floral strings that hang off the turban, covering his face. My guess is, the uglier the groom's mug, the more the floral strings. So fate has it that the ugly ones are blind-folded, perched on a blinkered horse walking into the sunset:)

Of course, in the unforgiving heat and humidity, the groom's outfit has to be a heavy silk pathaani. Don't ridicule this just yet...this is quite ingenious. Conservative Hindu men (read virgins) need a very compelling reason to break the mental shackles of celibacy on the important night. What better way of ensuring this than boiling the groom all day, while he is forced to smile at mostly strangers making small talk with them. So, the first 'shot' he gets at privacy, the Nelly sound track plays in the background 'It's getting hot in here, so take off...' to help in adding to the billion plus 'good boys and girls' ...the future of this nation:)