Khem Cho? MajaMa? Thank God 2018 is coming to an end. No more big fat Indian weddings or load shedding to look forward to!

Yup, Those very same weddings where ladies drape slippery sarees with more shimmer and shine than the sun while men are attired in more colours than those in the rainbow. If you don’t have the fragile dance floor gyrating frenziedly to the latest Bollywood chartbusters, it ain’t a celebration!

The Big Fat Indian Wedding is about everything except the actual ceremony. It is about flaunting the hitherto unheard of picturesque destination, an A-listers guest list, lip-smacking world cuisine, the bride’s designer lehenga, and the groom’s sherwani.

It is all about creating that Perfect Internet Moment of a spectacular show!

What untold stress really! Don’t agree?

Let me explain.

Firstly one has to make sure that there are no celebrities worth their Insta/SnapChat salt, getting hitched around the same time. One has to grab every single online eyeball available! Mind you, TRP ratings aren’t for sharing. All the foreign publications, and TV features want exclusive coverage, remember? Can’t afford to be an also-ran!

Zeroing in on that unpronounceable pretty hamlet nestled amongst the Alps, by the lakeside and then to draw up that watertight non-disclosure document for the wedding arrangers! The sheer ability to have a destination wedding is a show of strength – that you have arrived and have enough legit moolah to splurge. It is a no-holds-barred competition with all daggers drawn to snag the most expensive wedding spot.

Ferreting out Trendy hashtags – Virushka, DeepVeer, NickyAnka is so yesterday. The grey cells have to pampered with top-notch broccoli to churn out great catchy monikers. Talking about weddings, DeepVeer gave us new coordinated wardrobe goals and NickyAnka Insta popularised Desi-Girl Sangeet to the western world! But I tell you, the Gujju wedding of the century, hit it straight out of the park. While a guest on KJO’s ChitChat show cannot choose a fave khan without quaking in his boots, Bade Bhaiya made it a Khantastic threesome with Beyoncé as the bonus!

Pruning the guest list. One cannot have the entire hoi polloi landing up with their mobile cameras. Otherwise, the internet is going to be flooded with grainy films of home-video style wedding videos. The main show of strength for any wedding worth its artisanal sea salt is its guest list. Attendees reflect the host’s power on the social spectrum. You got to have top-level politicians, senior bureaucrats, businessmen jostling amongst themselves to get an invitation (even if they don’t know you). Else you are declared a Wannabe.

Living on celery because ‘food’ is four-lettered. Whoever said that you aren’t the sum total of your weighing scales hasn’t checked out the latest Versace. Jockey might know you but the DSLR is heartless.Glow it up, Girl.

Lehenga Hoga Mehenga! Getting Sabya (SabyaSachi to the uninformed) on the team – Only for you. Manish can look after the rest of the family for their threads coordination. Hand me downs by mothers and grandmothers is passe!

Acing the jiggles for the Sangeet aka Bachelorette Party – Like it or not, two left feet on guests is a curse really because Wedding Videos are for posterity, not the vows. If you have the moolah you can have the Big B baritoning about the proceedings in the Queen’s English to the uninitiated about the heart-warming traditional wedding rituals. You can throw in a Hillary for variety!

Identifying the right NGO or cause to contribute, so that you can sleep easy at night after splurging for two weeks on the fiesta. The conscience is clear and the balance sheets look neat.

Maybe, working on wedding vows and understanding the stuff you are chanting/saying as you take the holy plunge.

The big fat Indian wedding, therefore, isn’t just an ostentatious celebration of money.It is also about acing the competition and asserting power.

Pan them all you want, someone is laughing all the way to the bank!

No clue? Err SabyaSachi? Manish Malhotra? Lake Palace?

On a serious note, this writer wonders, in the wake of farmers’ chests being flattened, if only the above mentioned excess fat could be trimmed and some of it used to adopt a few villages? Too much to expect maybe when your 27 floored Antilla overlooks the largest slum of Asia.

Just ditch this list, invest in education, get a terrific degree, learn a skill set that can make you financially independent. Put the money saved to good use by buying yourself a warm nest.

Because marriage is the wonderful solemnizing of love between two equal partners That is the key.

Now back to some normal weddings!

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