Wedding: Blessings Turned Burdens

The marriage ceremony has just finished and now dogs are rolling on the leftover meals disposed of at the street corner. The river stands strangulated as it fails to carry down the massive plastic mess packed in huge polythene bags – another class of leftover garbage from the ceremony. The father/mother who just finished licking their fingers are now contemplating as to how they can arrange for such a feast over their daughter’s marriage. These are but a few of the aftershocks of marriage in Kashmir – an occasion of sanctity that has now expanded into full scale ostentatious machinery with nuts and bolts getting added to it each day. Over the years, we have heard religious clerics, social activists, civil society and other sections of society forewarning us of our extravaganza, spendthrift and excesses committed on the events of marriage. Is there anybody listening to the call? People are indeed listening, but not to these sermons which call for cutting down the expenses on marriage, but to those who call for innovations, additions and making marriages more complex. An entire industry has emerged, catering to our tastes for extravaganza, show off and the insane competition of surpassing one another in spendthrift and ostentatious showbiz. Marriage was supposed to be an occasion of joy, not only for the couple but all the members of family and extended family. But this occasion of joy is preceded by insurmountable odds where the family is compelled to arrange for lavish feast, humongous gathering and niceties of hundred thousand breeds which bring more depression and less joy. There are numerous other issues revolving in the orbit of marriage from the issue of dowry to adding on of complexities each year. Here we shall confine ourselves to the immediate but oft ignored issue of resource wastage on marriages and the implications thereof on the individual and the society.

Given the global hunger index and the grotesque images emerging from African and Sub-Saharan countries, where children are dying of hunger for the want of food are both shaking and awakening in their nature. One is shaken to the core to see people crying and dying for a loaf of bread and even a cursory look at the abundance we are blessed with awakens us to thanksgiving and satiety. One is simultaneously awakened to the importance of food, the consequences of its shortage and the need of consuming food judiciously without wasting an iota of it. Is this awakening reflected in our lives and do we caution ourselves against the evil of wastage? The blatant answer is a resounding NO, we are least sensitive to this menace of wasting food and wasting it like anything. It is said that figures speak loud and clear? “India wastes 68,760,163 tons of food every year which means 50 kgs of food is wasted per person every year in India (50kg/ capita). China also wastes a large quantity of food i.e 91,646,213 which is around 64 kgs / capita. However, as the population of China is much higher this is still less when we compare this with developed countries like Australia, France and Germany where per capita food waste is 102, 85 and 75 kgs respectively. The US and Japan waste 59 and 64 kgs/ capita food every year as well”. Few years ago, a report claimed that the food wasted in France was enough to feed ten million people – as bright a perspective as it is dizzying. Back home, how do our consciences afford to throw away the leftover rice, salad, water bottles and other eateries in huge quantities at a time when we are well aware of hunger and its global consequences? Can we do ourselves, our environment and our conscience a simple favour by having as much on the plate as much we can consume, with the prophetic saying “Food for two is enough for three and food for three is enough for four” never missing from mind.

But the issue of resource mismanagement in our marriages doesn’t stop at the wastage of rice and other eatables, but extends to the oddity of lavish decorations, myriad customs and litany of protocols to be observed in the spirit of religious fervour. Nobody denies the fact that this process of turning our marriages into occasions of blindfold spendthrift hasn’t complicated the very solemnization of marriage and there are people who have crossed the age of marriage just because their meagre resources disqualified them of the privilege. The number of unmarried girls and boys is on the steep rise and one, if not the only reason, being the expenses incurred on the occasion of marriage. This social insensitivity, the assent granted to excesses and extravaganzas at the cost of simplicity and modesty has set such an ill precedent that nobody has the courage to break the cycle - those who do are covertly seen as agents of regression, social backwardness and social outcasts.

Can we make marriages a little simpler? Can we wake up collectively to call of conscience and relinquish those habits which add to the complications of marriage and turn it into impossibility for those who can’t afford to keep up with the “Evolving Models of Serving Guests' '? Does it behove the conscientious citizens of a society with problems surrounding it like a ring of fire to indulge in a fool’s play of multiplying social ills? We are not denying and nobody can deny people their right to celebrate, to live a prosperous and dignified life, to invest in their joys, but what if all this comes at the cost of promoting social evils and making the lives of those who are economically less privileged more difficult?

Views expressed in the article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the editorial stance of Kashmir

The author is a Srinagar based columnist

Can we make marriages a little simpler? Can we wake up collectively to call of conscience and relinquish those habits which add to the complications of marriage and turn it into impossibility for those who can’t afford to keep up with the “Evolving Models of Serving Guests' '?