Brouhahahaha

Weddings. Depending on which part of them you make up, weddings can tingle your heartstrings and make you feel like a million dollars, or they can make you have successive strokes and a kidney failure with that.

It’s wedding-moodsy around me – my brother’s next year; Yashila’s two relatives’ in the coming weeks; my good pal recently had hers; another friend just invited me for his next month. And all the stories that come from it seem to be one of human strength, perseverance and absolute chaos.

I think any attempt to hold a revolutionary wedding against a backdrop of ‘tradition’ and ‘custom’ will fire in your face like how a cat’s ass is molested by a vehicle’s exhaust fumes (I like weird analogies). Take, for example, an Indian-Muslim wedding, an institution to be reckoned with in my community. I will now attempt to categorically make sense of the chaos found there.

1. Guests – There is no such thing as a “simple” Indian-Muslim wedding with only “important” guests. Everyone is important. Like how Friendster facilitates the meeting of you and your ex-secondary school janitor’s wife’s cousin-brother’s swimming instructor’s half-white lecturer in a 58-degree friendship, drawing up a guest list for a wedding becomes a massive, record-breaking Friendstarathon involving the furthest of relatives and the most forgettable acquaintances.

2. Venue – For the 500 guests from your side and 500 people from your significant other’s side, get ready for a thronging audience, fit for an Indian version of Woodstock. You need a place to put these folks in – the following perhaps is a thought process of an organizer (a relative, maybe): “Dei, the hotel ballrooms are too small! Ah, some ballrooms are huge - but too expensive! Football field? Cannot lah, too one kind! Hey: how about the local community center? Sure, they’ll suffocate, but that’s ok. If there are really, really too many VIPs, like say 200 more to the 1000 already coming, then no choice – void-deck lah. What, there was a funeral yesterday at the same spot? Not a problem! People are just going to eat the briyani and go right? So naïve you!”

3. Pre-Wedding Photo Shoots – there is a life-or-death need to take photos of yourself with your significant other in various high-end costumes, high-end make-up and high-end locations, photographed by a high-end photographer, binded in high-end book form, and to be stored forever in a high-end closet at home to collect high-end dust.

4. Door gifts – Shall it be aluminium plates from India (because they're very cheap due to the laughable exchange rate)? Or decorated eggs (raw) from Seng Choon? Or a piece of handkerchief that will serve no purpose in anyone’s life at all?

5. Music/Entertainment – Hmm, let’s choose: You can play, in the background, Arabic songs that no one understands, or contemporary AR Rahman duets, or bring in famous local celebs from Vasantham that no one pays any attention to (since the food is so good!), or get a live religious band from Malaysia/Afghanistan which plays Arabic songs no one understands. It goes without saying that decibel levels must reach or, better still, surpass the ultimate threshold of human hearing – otherwise, no one will know there is music.

6. Procedure of events (guest) –

a. You walk to the CC/Void-deck, identifying it by the Woodstock crowd. You join in the crowd, shoving, heaving, pushing and finally finding a table to sit. No sign of your friend, the groom, nor his newly-wedded wifey. Someone manhandles you to the nearest foldable table which is freshly peppered with yellow rice, half-chewed mutton parts and curry stains from the previous patrons. Who is the manhandler? Hey, it’s none other than Saiyed, the expatriate from Bangladesh who does the morning sweeps under the block (you find out that he does catering jobs as a hobby).

b. You eat very quickly, as the rest of the four unidentified VIPs who joined at the same time as you have already moved on to the dessert. They also burp loudly.

c. Suddenly, you spot the groom and wife! On stage. Why are they decorated like mannequins, you wonder. You struggle to understand how they can possibly keep their smile intact for a full 30 minutes. You jostle past the crowd and join in the queue that has formed to take photos with the couple. You get reminded of the time you queued up and took photos with Daffy and The Little Mermaid and Pooh (who doesn’t wear underwear) at World Trade Centre when you were 8. You snap out of it - your turn comes and you exchange a few kinds words with the groom, a friend of 15 years – “Hey, nice briyani. All the best.” Reply – “OK, thanks. Take a photo.” And before you know it, you’re posing for 3 cameras and you’re totally confused which direction to look at, blinded by the lights, or how a video camera could take stills (they can!).

7. Procedure of events (groom/bride) –

a. Put on clothes, make yourself pretty. Not ironed properly? Don’t worry, there will be 13 (thirteen) costume changes waiting for you, the reasons for which are unknown to any living individual.

b. Get married, with the Kaadi from MUIS and your close folks as witnesses on the same stage on which later you will sit on an elaborately decorated Fake Throne with sparkling, blinding bulbs.

c. Guests arrive (refer to 6 - Procedure of events (guest) for more details)

d. You are seated on the Fake Throne, where you smile and stare out into the arriving thronging crowds. You look for your spouse and get a shock of someone else sitting next to you. You realize that is indeed your spouse who is barely recognizable from the 2 mm-thick make-up and ornaments, plus the glare of the flashing bulbs that adorn the Throne.

e. In between, you’re told to change your costumes. 13 (thirteen) times.

f. You’re hungry and freezing from the air-con (or perspiring from the lack of it), but alas, the queue has formed around you to pose, take photos, and discretely, or otherwise, stuff into your hand their “payment”/”Green packet”/”moy” (in Tamil). The folks who are queuing up have finished their hearty meals, and before they leave, want to take a photo for memories. Of course, they will never, ever get to see the photo, as the completed album’s circulation would be confined to close relations, after which to would be put together with the Pre-Wedding photoshoot to collect high-end dust (see 3 above).


g. You and spouse eat the leftovers after the guests have left, and feel lonely in your flowing robe, make-up and Fake Throne. You curiously wonder whether what happened in the last 6 hours was a wedding to mark lifelong bliss and happiness, or a costume parade with free food where you and your spouse were the principle actors. And you blew $6, 569.59 for the wedding and got only leftovers. Perfect.

Ah, I hope I got everything down, but hey: no two Indian-Muslim weddings are ever the same, yes?