Wedding nonsense

APRIL 1996 - A revolution is desperately required to take the tedium out of Pakistani marriage ceremonies because the pain these functions inflict on millions is beginning to seriously affect the national character, or whatever little is left of that precious commodity we once had. With wedding guests continuing to present the most banal and frightening public performances, social policy formulators need to be called in to immediately rectify the situation. Failure to do so is bound to lead to total and complete social anarchy, which as we all know, is already in a flourishing epidemic stage nationwide.

For a long time we have all wondered at the sight of hordes of otherwise perfectly respectable men and women as they have plunged headlong into shamianas attacking the nearest tables laden with food with just the same guesto as a swarm of professional African locusts which have been on an extended holiday in Ethiopia for a decade and more. Men and women, otherwise known as pillars of society (admittedly there is no longer any building the pillars support) have been known to change characters within seconds, feeling no compunction in knocking down any and everybody who dares stand in their way as they ransack the food, pillage the sweets and gulp gallons of Coca-colas. Hundreds pour through the opening, eyes riveted on the food tables that lie ahead, their minds devoid of all thoughts except the single-minded determination to conquer the tables, defy all laws of gravity and space. Plates only ten inches in diameter are piled with food till the contents have a striking similarity to the Empire State Building in Manhattan.

Then, as people obsessed with this act of consumption, they turn their backs to the tables, place their legs purposefully apart, stare at the cotton-cloth wall and start digging the mountainside. There is no conversation except the rhythmic working of the jaws as they contents of the plate slide down at an alarming speed. With the right hand foraging constantly amongst the contents, digging with robot-like precision and speed, the left is a blurred sight, tossing out bones and half-devoured pieces of meat that fall like meteors with gentle thuds on the lawns below. With the first long pulls of Coca-Colas or Seven-Ups, come hearty and satisfying burps from regions deeper than Jules Verne ever dreamt of.

It’s not that these people haven’t had a meal in the last ten years. They have probably had a heavy lunch just a few hours before, not to mention the fried eggs and toasts/parathas that they packed in that very morning. It is not that the Musharaf government has banned eating, though the way things are going you can’t quite rule out that possibility, and the wedding guests are convinced this is their last good meal till Mian Nawaz Sharif gets his act together. No it’s not that. The fact is that the sheer boredom of having sweated it out for three hours, nourished perhaps by a transitory fizzy thing and a meaningless how-are-you-haven’t-seen-you type of conversation with people you are hardly dying to socialize with, knocks the civilized stuffing out of the most well-behaved people.

As the evening grinds on interminably and the conversations dry up, the looks get more and more vacuous, the mind starts playing games as the divider between this dreary existence and that ‘Shamiana’ laden with nourishment starts to fall, but each time reality takes over. There can be no eating. The wedding party is, as always, late. There is some last minute snafu, or one of the forty thousand fat aunts has had a fainting fit or lost her bag or both, the contractor has made a bobo on the chair count and more are now required, the yogurt has gone sour and the bridegroom’s father, the wretch, has made some fresh and impossible demands. There is nothing to do but wait for the minutes to crawl.

Naturally when the time comes, the civilized guest has just about as much table manners to display as a party of gorillas high on bananas. The result is witnessed hundreds of times every night across the length and breadth of the land. What is needed is a comprehensive plan to while away the hours. The ‘bhands’, the local wits, used to partly fulfill this gap, but it seems that increasingly no one tolerates their jokes and they have drifted away from weddings. Perhaps Bingo is not the answer though one can imagine the enthusiasm with which it would be played. Perhaps mind games, 20 questions or quiz shows can help. Who knows? Perhaps between arrival and food, guests can be entertained by songs and traditional dance routines. Little delicacies served with cold drinks in summer and hot cups of tea in winter, can while away the hours.

Surely with so much investment made in terms of money, time and effort that goes into every marriage, the time has come to examine the fundamental issue of entertainment to reduce the excruciating pain of the rituals. It is funny that while everyone suffers the torture of attending these painful affairs, no one is prepared to take the first step and earn the gratitude of millions in the bargain. Presently, the only so-called solution is to arrive an hour and a half late to escape the torture, but with everyone doing the same thing, the result is a forgone conclusion. We may have to skip the long-awaited economic revolution, but there is no reason why we can’t have a wedding revolution. The sooner, the better and let’s start giving the work to event management companies in the meantime !