Kerala Marriages -- 2020 Style.

 I came across photos of two marriages in Kerala, from two weeks ago. Since then I cannot decide whether to laugh or to cry.

The bride was drowning in gold necklaces. Her wrists were not showing in the photo but she had an inch-wide band of gold on her upper arm. She was a pretty girl, about twenty years from the look of her, and she was almost tilting under the weight. 

I looked at the pictures of the shamiana (the tent where the ceremony is performed). On one end the bride and groom were placed on a raised dais -- no escape. She was gaudily attired in bright red and held a bouquet of large red roses in her hands, compounding the image of a sacrificial offering. Did this level of gaudiness and excess come recently, or was it a gradual descent into opulence displayed and waste sanctified? In a country where so many do not have enough to eat or survive? Especially today, with Covid restricting movement, so many families who live on daily wages have no income at all.

I looked at the decor in what appeared to be a large hall, a venue probably dedicated to weddings. The walls were pasted with flowers and red cut-outs. There was something like a half-circle of a frame behind the couple who were on show, made of coloured cloth and wire and tinsel. The whole thing looked silly and laughable.

In my youth marriages of all communities were quite sparing in time and cost. I used to quip that it was a quick approval of the elders for a couple to copulate and live together. 

I got married on a September day in 1957. Nair weddings take place in the night and I remember the tent was made of bamboo and coconut fronds. The ceremony itself took about ten minutes. Garlands in front of the sacred lamps while the swami chanted, three times round the lamps holding hands. Now you are single, now you are not, off you go, The event took place in our front yard and the women crowded round the windows to watch. Dinner after, on plantain leaves, seated on grass mats on the floor.

My trousseau consisted of eight cotton saris and one wedding sari. The wedding sari was a white Benares silk with a gold motif. It became off-white over the years and the gold dimmed, a lot like my marriage, I used to think. Jewelry was sparse and barely noticeable. Looking back, what was remarkable was how quickly the life-changing event was accomplished.

A new fashion is for rich families to schedule weddings in Colombo,while Sri- Lankans come to Chennai to get married. All very strange and inexplicable.

Now, if only the money spent on these public spectacles was distributed to the very poor, for their education, for their food and their general survival. I hope it will happen.  Perhaps the government could get a law passed capping the wedding extravagances.