The Big Fat Indian Wedding

The number of Indian matrimonial sites are on the rise! I was nearly shocked out of my wits when I found out that even the nearby local matrimonial bureau had a website on. Shocked because I reside in an Indian village where I thought I might be the only one in the vicinity having an internet connection.

Some of the popular matrimonial sites include Bharat Matrimony and Shaadi. Bharat and Shaadi are words in Hindi (the national language of India) which mean 'India' and 'marriage' respectively.

Registration can be done in marriage bureaus. These marriage bureaus can be found at almost every nook and corner of India. If these bureaus find out people who match your requirements from their never ending database, they will call you up. Photos are then exchanged and if everything works out they get a very nice commission.

Yup, marriage is a business alright!

Do not misunderstand from the picture I have shown here. Prospective brides do NOT usually wait in a long queue at marriage bureaus, especially in their wedding costumes!

These are the people who roam around aimlessly from house to house in search of a prospective bride or groom.

As soon as they see a girl or guy who has reached marriageable age, questions are asked to parents, details, suggestions and smiles are exchanged -- and if the broker is lucky enough, he might even get a bonus 'tip' from parents to just make him work a little more harder in their case. Of course, he too gets a healthy commission when a match is made.

Who said matches are made in heaven?

Sometimes matches in India are made by Marriage Brokers too!

For many parents, this is the time when their tension actually starts. They make it a point to organize their child's wedding as best as they can! Making arrangements with beauty parlours, getting the right apparel and accessories -- all important decisions are done majorly by adults in the household.

No matter how low the budget is, the best thing about Indian weddings is that they make it look like the most expensive wedding in the world! Wedding halls need to be booked in advance, new clothes are bought by the entire family, jewelry purchasing takes place as if the stock will diminish in no time plus there is a lot of excitement in the air. To cut things short, let's just say a lot (and I do mean a lot) of shopping happens before the big fat Indian wedding.

Dancing, mehndi sessions (applying henna designs on hands and legs) happen prior to North Indian weddings whereas in South India pre-wedding days are more quieter.

As a South Indian Hindu, I do feel that our weddings should be more entertaining and exciting as the Northern folk. In our case, the pressure just subsides everything and at times there is more tension as compared to excitement in the air! A little bit of dance and music would certainly do wonders to our already tension wrecked minds. But that's just a thought of mine which hopefully would get implemented in the future!

The atmosphere prior to the wedding day is as infectious as the main day itself. Usually joint families take part in the decision making and long discussions take place throughout the day -- what should the bride/groom wear, where they should get the important stuff from, which all temples they should visit after the wedding and more and more topics are hit upon. Such events help create a deeper bond amongst family members and create memories that stay etched in mind for days to come.

Unfortunately in India, crime in the form of dowry system exists. This is fairly common in rural areas where the girl is given off with the promise that the groom and his family will be given some 'gifts' in return. These are usually in the form of money, gold, vehicles or other precious or expensive items. Such families are so desperate to get their girl child married off that giving money to the groom's family is not an issue with them.

The nightmare starts when the bride's family is not able to live up to these very promises. Horror stories can be read on newspapers every other day on dowry cases. The newly wed bride is tortured and treated in the most inhumane ways. This torture can even go on for months and years even after having children. Not only the bride but the children thereafter face the wrath of dowry.

Giving dowry is a crime and if such cases are reported the groom and his family can even land up in prison! But unfortunately, there are still many people out there who do not report such things and this ugly crime just continues like it did before.