Wedding Bells and Blues in Kashmir

“When the guests started pouring in, I saw them all more like examiners, and the big day like an examination which they would evaluate as per some standard which keeps updating its regulations more frequently than UGC which I was piling my fright about.”

It’s been almost a month now that the wedding of my two siblings, which I was looking forward to with excitement and joy, started to tighten around my neck like a noose which I am trying to loosen.

Even the Covid restrained clamour became sufficient enough eventually for me to seek Cognitive Behavior Therapies.

“But what should I say to my therapist?” I wondered.  “Never have I feared the idea of my own marriage ever, as I do now,” my need of therapy began on that note.

When my family decided to cut down on all the gold deals and baraat meals, it gave me a sense of empowerment and surety that the marriage ceremony would be an event which I can enjoy for its simplicity. Partially thankful for translating that bit to action, our event still entailed a fear of people’s perception.

Motivated by the fear of being judged, everything in the marriage was circled by a subtle fear that something might fail and people would judge (that they do anyhow).

The thrill of seeing my bride sister and groom brother and the favourite all-female gathering for wanwun vanished quickly with the wedding day preps on full swing, giving way to a myriad of other ceremonies- phirsaal, satim saal, phir khabar etcetera; the race of which would snowball panic inside me.

While making sense of some relatives and friends complaining about not being invited with their families to which was supposed to be a Covid wedding, I thought why they would brood over this opportunity of being bailed out from a potential site of infection.

The complaints doused briefly in my head when anxieties of bringing the best of boxes for dry fruits, the bags for the boxes, the types of dry fruits, best of cold drinks and milkshakes would shake my head.

“But what’s the fun of investing a good amount into things which are to be disposed off – like placing tissue paper and paas paas in paper machie boxes – that cost thousands,” someone in the family discussion remarked.

“That’s what everyone does and you don’t want to look like a shikaslad,” someone else remarked.

The discussions my eschatology-loving friends did at the university tea point on what Yajuj-Majuj could signify in modern times would give me long hangovers. When I would see their discussions heat up from petrodollars to Hagia Sophia inching to a sort of rift, I would demand silence for days so that I could seep in the consequences of such stimulating debates on shaping my perspectives.

Months later, after my graduation witnessing long-hour discussions on the consequence of not keeping pastries inside boxes, not serving the curd in copper vessels, not inviting three people instead of one and much, all inconsequential to the world, kept draining the hell out of my mind.

I wasn’t being asocial for my family and the necessary preparations which are a must for any event, albeit my social anxieties bordered on the central thought of grandiosity in little things because maxim- ‘lukan geich ne kahn kathh rozin’, drew it all. So everything in the wedding became about people’s acceptance of the pomp.

When the guests started pouring in, I saw them all more like examiners, and the big day like an examination which they would evaluate as per some standard which keeps updating its regulations more frequently than UGC which I was piling my fright about.

Among other things including some relatives who didn’t turn up because of malaal injecting slow glum into my family members, I just forgot to feel the elation of the moment I had waited for a very long time- my sister’s Nikah- which as per the books- is supposed to be central in a marriage ceremony.

But because the guests were around, I was only running for the fest to be okay.

The Qazi had started his sermon; I was struggling with a few women on the stairs outside the hall to hear my sister’s Nikah sermon. The thought of gender/ feminism/ women’s rights in Islam etcetera didn’t even cross my mind when Qazi Sahab talked about the rights of women to the gathering of men inside the hall, because the examination time was nearing.

To help us strengthen the tradition of quality reading and writing, we need allies like YOU. Subscribe to us.