MARRIAGE SPECIAL..PUNJABI WEDDING SHEDDING .

PUNJABI   WEDDING SHEDDING  Why is the groom wearing a dupatta and not the bride? How can chowmein be used to garnish paneer lababdar? How many wedding photos should you post on Facebook? For answers to these and many other questions about Punjabi weddings, read on...      Come December, and it is the annual north Indian wedding season. If you are of any importance you’ve been invited to a few weddings yourself. If not, dude, you need to re-evaluate what you want to do with your life.     Now, the Punjabi wedding isn’t something to be trifled with. There are so many complications that it is a good thing we only go through it once in our lifetime. Or at least most of us do. Here’s a short primer on the Punjabi wedding, whether you are getting married or just going to attend one. They didn’t show this stuff in Band Baaja Baaraat. YO YO HONEY SINGH There’s something in the Punjabi DNA that makes them start doing funny gyrations the moment they hear music. They may be short, fat, tall, short, hungry, full of paneer tikka, it doesn’t matter. It’s wired into their system. A dance floor is more important at a wedding than anything else. Because when they won’t be eating, Punjabis will be doing the bhangra.     The good thing is that it is extremely easy being the DJ at a Punjabi party. You just need to play Yo Yo Honey Singh every five minutes. And throw in an occasional Sukhbir. No party can end till a group of sweaty, drunk Punjus have thrown their hands in the air and sang along to Ishq Tera Tadpaave.     Some songs just never change. Makes you wonder what would happen to Punjabi weddings if Rafi had not rendered the timeless Babul ki duayen leti ja, which must be like the national anthem of weddings. TIKKA WEDS MANCHURIAN Diamonds may be forever, but so is paneer tikka. And dal makhni. For most people at the wedding, it is all about food. The smarter ones won’t eat for a day before they go to attend a wedding, to fully utilise their stomach capacity. After all, the only place in the world where you get Indian, Chinese, Italian, Thai, American, and Korean food under one roof is a Punjabi wedding. You could almost call it a mini United Nations of food. After all, the delights of eating chowmein topped up with paneer lababdar and French fries were unknown to mankind till the discovery at an Arora wedding back in the ‘90s. If you get diarrhoea, so be it. Collateral damage.     But seriously, if a wedding has less than five types of cuisines they must be really poor. Probably an honest government officer. Considerate couples will eat from a single plate in such cases. Saves the hosts some money, and helps bring couples together. They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. With Punjabis, it’s an 8-lane expressway with no speed limit. FAIR AND LOVELY How did people find their wives or husbands before we had shaadi.com or shared albums of your friends’ single friends on Facebook? Yes, at weddings. You have a nice ambience, people wear new clothes, the men are bathed, shaved and whitened by the mardon wali cream, the girls are covered in a layer of makeup thick enough to serve as bullet-proof protection, and Punjabi aunties are keeping score of who is single and ready to mingle. You can’t go wrong with it.     Single men should go to weddings in their best clothes and carry at least ten copies of their biodata and pictures, front and profile view. And be nice to the aunties. Touch her feet the moment you see one. INDIAN STRETCHABLE TIME Punjabi baraats are the upholders of the great tradition of IST. If the invite you got says the baraat will leave at 6:30 pm and reassemble at 8 pm, just add 2 hours to the specified time. For a wedding baraat to reach the venue before 11 pm is clear indication that the boy is a loser who likes watching Tusshar Kapoor movies and his sister’s TV serials. You don’t want that reputation.     I went to a friend’s reception once. The invite said the event would last from 7 pm to 10 pm. I reached there at 10:10 pm, only to see the tent being dismantled and the waiters demolishing the leftovers. You can’t mess with tradition like that. As expected, he got divorced a year later. TO DUPATTA OR NOT TO BE Wedding clothes provide the least RoI, given they typically cost as much as a small Greek island, and most people would wear them just once and then lock them away in a suitcase somewhere. Close to the equivalent of India’s GDP is locked away thus. (Just wait till Kejriwal ji finds this out) There’s a theory that divorce rates are increasing because of people who want to wear their wedding clothes a second time and recover the sunk cost.     Another interesting phenomenon is the guy wearing a sherwani with a dupatta and the bride wearing a lehenga, often without one. Hindu religion probably allows for only one of the two to be dupatta-clad. SHAGUN The traditional way to gift is cash. The going rate depends, and it is important to build consensus beforehand. Fix the rate with others gong to the wedding, so you don’t look like an outlier. Going to a wedding in the neighborhood? Call up the aunties and decide whether to gift Rs 501 or Rs 1100. Or more, if you are from South Delhi, where the inflation rate is much higher.     Once in a while, you would get a card that says ‘No gifts please. Your blessings are enough’. Don’t let that fool you. You will probably be judged if you go emptyhanded. Take a toaster at least. You must have got plenty over Diwali. It is for a reason that the wedding season immediately follows Diwali. RELATIVES ROCK The saying goes that most relatives exist only to be visited once a year at Diwali, or to find faults during weddings. ‘The rotis were cold. The paneer was overcooked. We didn’t get asked by the waiter again after we said no to the Pepsi. There was too much pollution at the venue. The venue was too far. The photographer only took our photo 25 times’.     THIS is the job of relatives. Their constant cribbing helps ward evil spirits off. Send them thank you cards after the event. Nostradamus once predicted that the world will end the day relatives stopped cribbing at weddings. THE TIPS MAFIA You might have emptied that secret Swiss bank account you opened just to get your children married, you may rent a Mercedes for the doli, and have the caterer prepare a feast that could feed all of Somalia for a year, but rest assured you will be harassed at each step of the way by the various people you supposedly already paid, for tips. The handler of the ghodi your son is to ride will first demand a tip just to let your boy get on the horse, with subtle threats of getting him thrown off otherwise. Not to be left behind, the dhol walas will then not let the boy get on the horse till they get paid their share. Don’t pay them at the risk of being beaten like a dhol instead.     And God help you if you get caught by a gang of eunuchs en route. They’ve been known to surround the car with the efficiency of NSG commandos in a hijack situation, and only let go till they get paid, which can be anything starting from Rs 21,000 for lower middle class families. It doesn’t help that Punjabi families dance like they are at a strip club, throwing currency notes around as if the dhol player was Melody from Las Vegas. Totally sets the wrong expectations and people start coming on the stage asking you to rotate a hundree rupee note on the head of the groom and give it to them. KODAK MOMENT OVERDOSE Imagine the jai-mala ceremony is happening. The boy just put the garland (made entirely of orchids, specially imported from foreign) around the bride’s neck, the two hearts are beating loudly and they start to stare into each other’s eyes when a loud voice rings out. “Sir, once more please. Look in the camera this time”.     Once-in-a-lifetime moment killed for eternity.     Yes, if the wedding ends up resembling a circus, the photographers are the ringmasters. Posing throughout the evening for the thousands of camera shots from different angles, with all permutations of relatives and friends, while also appearing to be interested can almost count as the first test of the strength of the marriage. It doesn’t help that getting a photograph with the couple on the stage also doubles up as the attendance. Somebody needs to provide cards you could swipe to mark your presence and a little box to drop your shagun envelopes.     There have been cases of the bride running away after the fourth take of the heads-tilted-at-55-degreeswhile-leaning-in-towards-each-other-at-15-degree shot. In one case, the father of the bride was asked to move off the stage by the photographers because his blue suit was not going well with the flower arrangement. The poor man blessed the couple from 20 feet away, his view partially blocked by the photographers. In some cases, the photographers have been known to do the kanyadaan themselves to save time and hassle. Or maybe take away the photographers and actually enjoy the damn occasion. FACEBOOK IT Don’t forget to update your Facebook status to ‘married’ within two hours after the wedding, or the registrar might deny your marriage certificate. Also, if you are not posting at least 100 pictures on Facebook everyday while on your honeymoon, people back home might assume something’s wrong. You don’t want that to happen, do you? THE SKY IS THE LIMIT To your imagination, when it comes to weddings. And money helps solve most problems. No music past 10 pm? No firecrackers allowed at the venue? The bride’s side doesn’t like alcohol? All it takes is some innovation and a portable bar setup in one of the cars.     Smarter people might want to avoid the hassle and use the money they are going to spend instead on a world tour or a little bungalow in a posh part of Gurgaon. People are going to find faults regardless of how much you do. All that fried food will just upset your stomach. The photographers will come in the way. You’d have spent the equivalent of Ethiopia’s GDP, gone through government-trying-to-save-a-noconfidence-motion levels of stress and not even feel the intensity of the occasion.     But then, it won’t be a Punjabi wedding if a thousand people weren’t a part of it.

ATULYA MAHAJAN TCR121117