So here I am on my way back from a family wedding, the
wedding was a two day affair which had 6 different events culminating into the
final marriage ritual for the bride & groom. I attended as a relative of
the bride & the wedding took place in the city where the groom resides.
In a nut shell the agenda was: First Day – Engagement
Ceremony, Visit to the temple & evening entertainment & dance show
which Indians call “Sangeet”. Second Day – another event which I am still clueless
about, a visit to the temple & finally marriage ritual late at night
(although technically it was early morning of the next day)
This post is going to be highly clichéd since we all are
aware and already know some of the stereotypes we encounter in all Indian
Marriages, plus for me it was quite an experience since it was the first family
wedding that I attended after a span of 13 years (it has been so long that I
even got the number of years wrong in the last post) and the wedding in taking
place in a city which is in that part of India which is known for over the top
antics for every occasion. Oh Boy!!!!! Am I excited!!!
Upfront some clarifications:
Firstly, since males & females have very distinct role,
responsibilities & behavioral patterns in Indian weddings the individual stereotypes
will fit more appropriately for a particular sex. I would mention that in the
descriptions for the stereotypes – so yes this post is going to be sexist at a
lot of places!!!!!!!
Secondly, there is nothing small about Indian marriages;
everything is big & larger than life, so even a blog post about Indian
marriages cannot be tiny. This is going to be a long one.
1) Santa, painting the town red – Let me crush your hopes before they get
too high, I am not talking about some guys who love kids or nice old people,
the only reason I am using Santa’s reference is because of Red color. These are
men who are serial tobacco addicts. Their mouths are more red then the bride’s
dress or the bright red nail polish of the bridesmaids. If these guys are not
controlled they will paint your entire wedding venue red with their spitting
habits. If you don’t want a red colored graffiti on your expensive dresses stay
as far as possible from these guys.
2) The Miss (Mis) Informer – Yeah we all have one or two females like this
in every family wedding. These are women mostly married who would always claim
that they know the entire schedule of the wedding, they know the exact time
when all the different events will happen, where they will happen, who will do
what, who will be required. fundamentally these females are elusive to the
sentence “I do not know”. Goes without saying that most of their information if
not all are incorrect, because they themselves don’t know Jack Shit about the
wedding.
3) Bride’s Bitches – These can be some of the toughest guests to manage,
these are the closest friends/gossip partners/BFFs of the bride. Half of them
who are married are happy as they are thinking “welcome to the club bitch, now you
would know what it takes” for the bride, the other half who are unmarried are
thinking “one bitch less to compete with for dresses, shoes & accessories”,
whoever are left just draw hope that someday they will also get their knight in
shining armor & are genuinely happy for the bride. These girls are
demanding – separate room, separate place for makeup, separate cars for
transportation, unrestricted access to bride’s room (and Groom’s room also
sometimes). I wonder if somewhere in the entire event they start assuming it is
their marriage!!!!!
4) Groom’s Grubs – If I mention Bride’s Bitches, how can I not elaborate
the Groom’s grub like friends. They are the worst of the lot both sides of a
wedding put together. Someone has to beat them in their head (or their ankles,
where their brains lie) that merely being close to the groom does not change
their lineage to royal blue bloods and does not entitle them to any special
treatment. Most of them are there for free food & booze, and the perpetual
hope of getting laid – but then come to think of it, is there any place where
guys go without the hope of being laid? (I can think of one perhaps – Men’s
restroom :))
5) The Complete Package – I am not talking about some good looking hunk so
don’t get excited. These can be both men and women. They are mostly in their
mid-40s or elder then that. They would have met you after a long time will come
to you, talk to you for less than 10 minutes and then comes their patented
question – What is your package? Or How much do you earn? The more irritating
part it they will not take a subtle no for an answer and will keep pestering unless
either you tell them correct or incorrect amount or just plain & simple ask
them to fuck off!!!!!. Generally these are people who are deeply insecure about
their own earnings or their kid’s earnings and constantly try and draw
comparisons in the family just to see where there kids are placed, or just
boost their own ego.
6) Male Chauvinistic Pigs – There are plenty of men who fall in this
bracket. These guys will get up in the morning of the wedding functions, put on
a routine shirt & a fuck all trouser, look like crap come out in the hotel
lobby and discuss it with other men as to how they got ready in 30 minutes
while the females are taking two hours. My simple two point answer to these
assholes – Don’t worry the effort of 2 Hours vis a vis 30 Mins will show all
day, and have you ever come across a wedding where the event was made to look
glamorous because of guys.. I mean whom are we fooling it’s the women that make
the wedding worth attending. Have you ever seen a wedding album look colorful
because of the pictures of men who attended the wedding? We all know the answer
don’t we? My suggestion to all these morons – let them take their time; trust
me they will make it worth your while bu looking gorgeous.
7) The Kid Contemporary Dancers Brigade – Anyone who has seen contemporary
dance understands that the form requires extensive floor work techniques. Now
since we are covering all age groups how can we leave out the kids. This is their
time to shine & their names to be mentioned. There are always some kids
ranging from approximately 2 – 5 years age group whom you would see sliding,
rolling all over the floor of wedding halls and that too in nice new dresses.
Their moms don’t care or they care for some time and after that they get too
tired of caring for these kids, in most of Indian weddings men by default don’t
care about their kids. So the final result is that you would see them at all
the different floors be it banquet hall floor, reception stage floor, if
nothing else then out in the open grass they will roll their way to glory. I
gave a suggestion this time; leave them out in the morning for an hour
unattended in the banquet hall perhaps we can save the money which we would pay
to the janitors. For the record the suggestion was not received well :)
8) SDIPA Rejects – If anyone has ever attended an SDIPA (Shiamak Davar
Institute of Performing Arts) Class you know how bad you have to be in order to
be rejected from those classes. Yet some of those rejects always find their
ways in the bride’s or groom’s families. These are people who are uber excited
to dance at every single wedding, this is a closed knit group who think they
entertain everyone and are the life of the weddings. Can someone give them a
reality check please? The only problem is that their interpretation of dance
falls in one of the two dimensions. Let me explain this to make it simpler –
First dimension is wildly flailing your arms & legs in different directions
in an uncoordinated fashion. The Second dimension is movements so subtle that
you need a telescope to observe & appreciate them; to the naked eye they
appear to be a tree’s trunk stationary & erect. There is one commonality
across the two dimensions – music playing in the background!!!!!!
9) The Tourist worse then one starring Johnny Depp & Angelina Jolie –
Not many people disagree as to how horrible the movie “The Tourist” was. Based
on that theme these are both men & women who are outstation visitors and
want to use this wedding as a reason to get a free tour of the city. They will
arrive and make demands like someone to accompany them to all the tourist
oriented places, someone to get a car arranged for them etc etc. They would not
want to spend a single penny doing any of the above. Someone explain to them
that they were invited for a wedding and they did not win a free trip in some
competition. These are the folks who arrive either too early for a wedding or
stay over a couple of days once the wedding has finished.
10) Indecent Proposal – These are a lot of times the same guys whom I
mention in point 9 above. They would meet you in the marriage, talk to you for
a couple of minutes, figure out how they are related to you (or they will
confuse you, which also works for them), then figure out which city you stay
in, ask your address and then quietly walk away. Someday much later after the
wedding you would get a call from them that they are arriving in your city and
would like to stay at your place. These people use that introduction as a
shameless mechanism for avoiding accommodation & food costs in every city.
My Suggestion – always give them the wrong address & incorrect phone
numbers!!!!!
11) Shobha De Wannabes – Yes we all saw this coming, these are females who
think they have to critique everything & anything in the wedding some
examples – wedding venue is too close (or too far) from the city, bride’s dress
is too subtle (or too revealing), the groom is too thin (or slightly overweight
– Indians can read it as healthy), decoration is too plain (or too gaudy), the
list goes on and on. Take these females to the food stalls having 500 dishes,
they would still identify the one delicacy missing and would be prompt to point
out why that was the most important dish to have in the wedding. Critique!
Critique!! Critique!!!
12) Mr/Mrs Fixit – How can we forget this category, these are folks who
think God wanted to make them cupids but ran out of raw materials and traded them
in for humans. They will try and fix you up with a person of opposite sex
irrespective of whether you want it or not so long as you are unmarried. I
always wonder are these people suffering in their own marriages and are
thinking – why should they alone burn and wants us to join the suffering in the
inferno or they are so happy that they want you also to experience the same. I
guess the answer somewhere lies in the middle it’s a mix of both. What these
folks perhaps need to realize is that if it ain’t broken then don’t try to
FIXIT.
13) The Alpha Fail oops!!! Male – These are almost always guys they will
come up to you and without any context start talking about how great their
businesses are doing, how many influential people they know, how they are
invited for all the special occasions by celebrities, they will boast about how
much they have contributed to charity or for religion. They really try to
portray that they are the next in line once God decides to take a vacation. The
funnier part is sometimes their conversations end with the question about
whether you would be interested to invest your money in their business with the
delusional promise of the most unrealistic returns.
14) The Great Wall of China – These are folks
whose sense of positioning themselves at any particular place has been
completely obliterated. Any event happening on the stage be it singing,
dancing, any other form of entertainment, any
rituals related to marriage, these folks will involuntarily find
themselves standing right in your line of sight while you are sitting and
enjoying the event , it is like their sub conscious has a separate direction
sensing mechanism altogether. The more irritating part is that they do not
stand there to get a better view of the stage, they are oblivious to what is
happening on stage, they are just chatting their way to glory with someone who
is another brick in this great wall. Depends upon how you look at it – Birds of
a feather flock together or It takes two hands to clap.
15) The Cross Checker definitely not the Hot Stepper- These are the folks whose
sub conscious wanted them to be in Government’s Secret Service Function but
unfortunately their conscious never developed enough to make them eligible for
those coveted jobs. So they try and satisfy themselves by putting their detective’s
hat on during these weddings. All that they will do is get a piece of
information from you then will go & cross check the same subtly with your
parents, spouse or siblings. Like where are you employed they will take the
answer and verify the same with someone close to you when you are not around.
Why they do it or what they get out of it? I will update here once I find an
answer. As of now your guess is as good as mine.
16) Desi Cosmo & Vogue Combo - 2 in 1 Offer – These are always women
folks. They run a standard programme. They will start with a 10 Minute recap of
what happened in the last marriage they met you or they went, in what all ways
this is different than that. Then once the recap is done and you are in the
mood, the actual episode starts for 45 minutes to an hour (yes there will be no
commercial breaks also) they will tell you all the filthy gossip from the
family – who is dating who, who is about to divorce whom, whose marriage is in
shambles, where all adultery is rampant, whose daughter ran away with whose
son, whose daughter ran away and then came back, they even have information
about whose daughter is about to run away again and with whom. I almost feel
like they have an elaborate scoring & tracking mechanism in place monitored
across the globe thru some satellite or something. Finally they will wind up
the show leaving you excited about what all they will have information on when
they see you next so stay tuned. I have two suggestions for this they should
come with two warning messages: (a) Listener’s discretion is advised, and (b)
Any event described in this conversation is fictional, any connection or
similarity to any person living or dead is purely coincidental or I just want
to be a BITCH!!!
17) The Family (not Cable) Connection Guy – These folks can be of either
sex, these are people who will talk endlessly without even breaking for a breath
that why it is so important to attend every single wedding that happens in the
family irrespective of how remote the location is, how being connected with the
family and regularly meeting them is the only way to obtain eternal happiness
& inner peace, they will try and show you merit in exhausting all your
leaves at work to visit relatives & their weddings, they will sound
completely convinced that the solution to all your problems in life lies in
being with the extended family. On a side note –for me the problems gets
exaggerated when I am in connection with my extended family!!!!! My suggestion
– These people are great to get a thin neck, just be around them and keep
nodding in complete agreement, don’t bother listening.
18) Hungry, Hungry Hippos – This is the last stereotype which I would be
talking about in this post from my side. This is very close to my heart & I
am very particular about this so there would not be any humor in this. The
stereotype which I am talking about is people who waste food at weddings. I
absolutely despise this category – I am a firm believer of not wasting food
because of the obvious reasons that everyone alive needs it and unfortunately
not everyone can afford it. These worthless humans will take every dish which
is on the menu, taste some of them not taste the others and just throw it away
and then some of them will even criticize it, that is unacceptable and truly
these people should be tied to a leash and left starving for 2 to 3 days to
make them realize the importance of food. Enough Said!!!!!
So this was my experience from a family wedding after 13
years, really so many stereotypes. So once again the question, how many of them
can you identify on your next family wedding experience, feel free to let me
know if there are more and I would expand this post to include more.
By this post I may have just eliminated my chances of ever being invited for another wedding.
In the meanwhile Happy Stereotyping!!!!!
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