The Big, Fat Indian Wedding. Needs. A. Gym. Seriously.

    Weddings are made in heaven, they say. I wonder, then, why does all the pomp have to be done on earth? For instance, “Hi, I’m Karuna from Hyderabad, and, here -Varun’s my husband. We got married in heaven.” How I wish it were all as simple as it sounds.
     As long as I am in India, I know this question will plague me each time a baraat passes by my house, or when there’s a wedding at a friend’s or a fiend’s, or worse still, when there is a wedding in the family. Why is it that marriage is not one’s choice in India? I know I am not to get answers (read: satisfactory answers) to these questions as long as I search for them. But that does not mean I shall stop asking questions. Ask, we must.
     Another issue about marriages that cheeses me off is the fact that India’s is a chauvinist society. A sexist one. So, when it comes to weddings, just because I am a boy (‘man’ feels so chauvinist-piggy), I have to carry all the luggage to the vans that transport people to the wedding hall and back. Well, just because the Indian psyche is that women or girls are not strong enough to carry weight. If a girl has the right to take rest, so does a boy. I know it all seems so lazy-boyish, but as stupid as it may sound, I am lazy.
     Why does the groom’s family never have to do anything? Why, on earth, do the wedding costs go to the bride’s family? Why do people ‘not take dowry’ in money terms but in the form of wedding costs? Why is a woman considered to be a liability? Why does arranged marriage appeal more to people? Why does the woman have to tell her in-laws what she knows (cooking, singing, whatever, whatever)? Why does the Indian eye still see inter-caste marriages as lowly? Why is it okay if a boy has been through a number of whirlwind romances, but not if it’s about a woman? And why, of marriage, in the first place, do people think of highly? Why does everybody have to get married? Why is a widower remarrying not noticed (if not accepted), but a widow remarrying frowned upon? Why are divorcees considered bugs? Why does a woman usually get blamed in a divorce-if domestic violence is not proved?
     And why do people have to ask a boy to ‘bring a good girl’ (so typically TamBrahm) to his house? Because they care? Yeah, they do, they care for others’ issues too much. We Indians suffer from the Peeping-Tom Syndrome. We cannot help interfering in others’ lives. What I shall eagerly wait for, is the day when Indians start caring-yeah, caring a damn. And also for the day when The Huge, Obese Indian Wedding succeeds in its diet plan to become less of a vulgar show-off  of wealth and power than what it is now.