From: T.S. Krishnamoorthy
Sent: Tuesday, October 01, 2013 10:22 PM
To:
Subject: Kerala weddings go from spartan to splashy
Instead of other Hindus changing over to the traditional simple Kerala weddings, the Keralites are now copying the opulant Hindu weddings! What a pity!
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Kerala weddings go from spartan to splashy
Malini Nair, TNN | Sep 22, 2013, 05.19 AM ISTThe five-minute Malayali wedding, the last bastion of simplicity, finally falls to the flamboyant charms of Bollywood's band, baaja, baraat
The caparisoned elephant at the entrance is the first shock. Then, you walk straight into Nala and Damayanti, the star-crossed couple from Mahabharata, in full Kathakali regalia waiting to usher you into the hall. This is after you have been welcomed by a percussion ensemble , and watchedMohiniyattam and Kathakali tableaux go by.
The bride and groom sit in a pushpa ratham, a chariot of flowers of the kind the gods flew around in, placed at the entrance of a faux Krishna temple. This is the stage for an NRI tycoon's daughter at Kochi's Le Meridien.
At a big Christian wedding in the same city, the bride has decided to be Cinderella. She is dropped off by a pumpkin chariot in a white gown and gloves and various other Disneytype props. Even Muslim nikaahs have been spiced up with 'sufi nites' .
There used to be an old joke about Malayali weddings in Delhi. A friend of the groom, freezing in the January cold, steps out of the temple for a quick smoke before the rituals begin. He returns five minutes later — to find the wedding over.
Stories like this are now history. The five minutes have stretched to five days. The sparse rituals are being fattened up with mehendi and sangeet ceremonies imported straight from Karan Johar movies. The sets and themes are elaborate, and the costume and jewellery could put Bollywood movie songs to shame.
"Kids these days find traditional Kerala weddings drab. It is all over in a jiffy — you exchange garlands, rings, clothes and go your way. So business-like , they complain . They want to have fun, party with friends, DJ, dholak, the works. Hardly fair to expect them to rush through rituals like we did once," says Shobha Menon, mother of a 25-year-old who had a riotous fiveday wedding in Kochi recently.
Ironically, the emphasis on extravaganza is accompanied by a growing obsession with the 'purity' of the ritual. Parents have taken to getting heads of communities (the Nair Service Society, the Ezhavas' SNDP for example) to ratify the rituals and material used in them. A planner points to the increasing demand to introduce vedic chanting for nuptials, an idea totally alien to Nair weddings. "Sometimes the purohit does it and sometimes we do it ourselves," says C Sajani of Bersaath events.
Traditional Kerala weddings were matter-of-fact family events, more a way of establishing a social contract than anything else. Over a century ago, when the rituals were even more elementary, weddings were called podava kodukkal — literally the gifting of a set of clothes to seal the contract between two mostly agrarian families. A quick exchange of garlands and the nuptials were done.
But over the last few years, estimate wedding planners, young couples have done away with the austerity . The idea of a wedding planner itself would have been laughable once; most Kerala weddings didn't even demand an officiating priest — the local karanavars (elder male relatives) sufficed. But buoyed by an economy flush with remittance money and a desire to make a splash, the band, baaja and baraat came into Malayali weddings.
"Even if the family is middle class and can't make a big splash, it still wants a trimmed version of the five-day gala — say two days or three days. A Rs 3-5 lakh extravaganza is a must. This will include a mehendi and sangeeth and a prewedding party," says Sajani.
Until recently, the elders in the family lined up at dawn to accept dakshina and bless the bride. Today, the bride spends her dawn at the beauty parlour and has no inclination to come home and get the coiffeur mussed during the blessings. So dakshina has gone into another evening followed by dinner. The engagement, an otherwise nonevent in Kerala, is held on another day. The trousseau, too, has gone from three saris — the pre-wedding sari, the cream and gold ritual cotton sari, and the third gifted by the husband — to elaborate lehengacholi outfits and even western gowns. As for the jewellery, the joke goes that the necklaces start at the throat and steadily dip down to the pubis. A guest at a recent wedding recalls 1001 sovereigns strung around the bride's neck.
Hardly surprising then that wedding budgets today range between Rs 30 and 35 lakh for a twoday event. A recent Ernakulam wedding was decked with flowers worth Rs 1.5 crore, says P John of Exotica Florist. As for cars, anything less than an Audi or a BMW to fetch the bride or groom would be considered infra dig at big weddings . "The cost varies from Rs 10,000 to Rs 20,000, for 8 hours," says Shamsudheen from car rental, Safari Days, Ernakulam.
Those who have been tracking the rise of consumerism and its impact on society are not very impressed at the wedding carousing. Feminist and scholar J Devika says that you only have to look at the spiralling divorce rates among young Malayalis to see the pointlessness of the multi-crore revelry.
Those who have been tracking the rise of wild consumerism in Kerala over the last few years and its impact on society are not very impressed at the wedding carousing . Feminist and scholar J Devika is among them. "Do contrast it with the fact that more and more young folk are ready to break up soon if things don't work out between them," says Devika.
You only have to look at the spiralling divorce rates among young Malayalis, who have no patience with to see the pointlessness of the multi-crore revelry. From 8,456 in 2005-06 to 38,231 in 2011, the number of splintered marriages has steadily grown in the state. The first three months of this year notched up 1937 divorce cases registered in family courts across Kerala, a high compared to the national average.
-- With inputs from Preetu Nair
The caparisoned elephant at the entrance is the first shock. Then, you walk straight into Nala and Damayanti, the star-crossed couple from Mahabharata, in full Kathakali regalia waiting to usher you into the hall. This is after you have been welcomed by a percussion ensemble , and watchedMohiniyattam and Kathakali tableaux go by.
The bride and groom sit in a pushpa ratham, a chariot of flowers of the kind the gods flew around in, placed at the entrance of a faux Krishna temple. This is the stage for an NRI tycoon's daughter at Kochi's Le Meridien.
At a big Christian wedding in the same city, the bride has decided to be Cinderella. She is dropped off by a pumpkin chariot in a white gown and gloves and various other Disneytype props. Even Muslim nikaahs have been spiced up with 'sufi nites' .
There used to be an old joke about Malayali weddings in Delhi. A friend of the groom, freezing in the January cold, steps out of the temple for a quick smoke before the rituals begin. He returns five minutes later — to find the wedding over.
Stories like this are now history. The five minutes have stretched to five days. The sparse rituals are being fattened up with mehendi and sangeet ceremonies imported straight from Karan Johar movies. The sets and themes are elaborate, and the costume and jewellery could put Bollywood movie songs to shame.
"Kids these days find traditional Kerala weddings drab. It is all over in a jiffy — you exchange garlands, rings, clothes and go your way. So business-like , they complain . They want to have fun, party with friends, DJ, dholak, the works. Hardly fair to expect them to rush through rituals like we did once," says Shobha Menon, mother of a 25-year-old who had a riotous fiveday wedding in Kochi recently.
Ironically, the emphasis on extravaganza is accompanied by a growing obsession with the 'purity' of the ritual. Parents have taken to getting heads of communities (the Nair Service Society, the Ezhavas' SNDP for example) to ratify the rituals and material used in them. A planner points to the increasing demand to introduce vedic chanting for nuptials, an idea totally alien to Nair weddings. "Sometimes the purohit does it and sometimes we do it ourselves," says C Sajani of Bersaath events.
Traditional Kerala weddings were matter-of-fact family events, more a way of establishing a social contract than anything else. Over a century ago, when the rituals were even more elementary, weddings were called podava kodukkal — literally the gifting of a set of clothes to seal the contract between two mostly agrarian families. A quick exchange of garlands and the nuptials were done.
But over the last few years, estimate wedding planners, young couples have done away with the austerity . The idea of a wedding planner itself would have been laughable once; most Kerala weddings didn't even demand an officiating priest — the local karanavars (elder male relatives) sufficed. But buoyed by an economy flush with remittance money and a desire to make a splash, the band, baaja and baraat came into Malayali weddings.
"Even if the family is middle class and can't make a big splash, it still wants a trimmed version of the five-day gala — say two days or three days. A Rs 3-5 lakh extravaganza is a must. This will include a mehendi and sangeeth and a prewedding party," says Sajani.
Until recently, the elders in the family lined up at dawn to accept dakshina and bless the bride. Today, the bride spends her dawn at the beauty parlour and has no inclination to come home and get the coiffeur mussed during the blessings. So dakshina has gone into another evening followed by dinner. The engagement, an otherwise nonevent in Kerala, is held on another day. The trousseau, too, has gone from three saris — the pre-wedding sari, the cream and gold ritual cotton sari, and the third gifted by the husband — to elaborate lehengacholi outfits and even western gowns. As for the jewellery, the joke goes that the necklaces start at the throat and steadily dip down to the pubis. A guest at a recent wedding recalls 1001 sovereigns strung around the bride's neck.
Hardly surprising then that wedding budgets today range between Rs 30 and 35 lakh for a twoday event. A recent Ernakulam wedding was decked with flowers worth Rs 1.5 crore, says P John of Exotica Florist. As for cars, anything less than an Audi or a BMW to fetch the bride or groom would be considered infra dig at big weddings . "The cost varies from Rs 10,000 to Rs 20,000, for 8 hours," says Shamsudheen from car rental, Safari Days, Ernakulam.
Those who have been tracking the rise of consumerism and its impact on society are not very impressed at the wedding carousing. Feminist and scholar J Devika says that you only have to look at the spiralling divorce rates among young Malayalis to see the pointlessness of the multi-crore revelry.
Those who have been tracking the rise of wild consumerism in Kerala over the last few years and its impact on society are not very impressed at the wedding carousing . Feminist and scholar J Devika is among them. "Do contrast it with the fact that more and more young folk are ready to break up soon if things don't work out between them," says Devika.
You only have to look at the spiralling divorce rates among young Malayalis, who have no patience with to see the pointlessness of the multi-crore revelry. From 8,456 in 2005-06 to 38,231 in 2011, the number of splintered marriages has steadily grown in the state. The first three months of this year notched up 1937 divorce cases registered in family courts across Kerala, a high compared to the national average.
-- With inputs from Preetu Nair
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