Culture and Lifestyle
Big Fat Indian Weddings and Social Responsibility: A Case

Photo by flickr/rsmith4321
Indians like weddings. Big ones: with all the pomp and show. In these occasions there are third and fourth degree, almost unrelated relatives and friends of friends of friends. From Indian standards, you are made aware that you are not doing that well in life if half your town is not present at your wedding. The matches made in heaven are also no less interesting than the festivities. These matches tend to be made by Auntijis (all women older than you by 5 to 10 years), Shaadi.com (and several other similar websites), love-arranged marriages, arranged-love marriages and once in a while by people being stupid enough (or smart, depending on one’s perspective) to really fall in love.
While these moments to remember can be made more personal or traditional or both, at a lot less expense, somehow investing in house, gold and big fat weddings is a national obsession. People take loans to pay for the arrangements and then there is a Stone Age custom of dowry. Even wedding invitations come with gifts and dry fruits these days. Guests at wedding have to shell out expensive gifts or cash as well, that tends to be compared after the event, to judge the affection of benefactor to the couple. It is basically a big fat event where everyone loses a lot of money. One can keep on writing more scathing critique of big fat weddings or even try to defend some of the good parts of this over-bloated new tradition but I am only interested in making a pragmatic and patriotic argument against excessive materialism.
While there is enough money in with middle class and upwards in the country very little of it gets spent on things that should matter. A large amount is spent on pomp and show. Why is that we are so averse to investing back in the economy and growing our own personal fortunes? The distant relatives that one usually never meets or cares about can anyway happily go about their business, without having to attend few more mandatory weddings.
If you think money is to spend and to hell with future investments, then too why spend it on feeding the well-fed? Why have a pretentious large affair? Make the spending count. Take a longer break than a touristy honeymoon. Go explore the world or for that matter, India. How many non-touristy destinations in India you have spent a week at? If you are conscientious how about opening a school or doing something for street kids or health care for poor? I can write several more suggestions but I am sure you can think of what matters to you. Anyway I need to stop writing, as I need to come up with a good excuse or an argument with my parents, who want to drag me to a big fat wedding in few hours and convince me that my India visit can be best utilized if they get to arrange a fat one for me too.
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