Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Wadings, waitings, weddings - whatever

Four-point alliteration done with, I'm going to talk today (goddamn this ghost! Yikes!) of a phenomenon I like to call the 'It's not my wedding, so I don't have to attend all the functions in it Blues'.
Now, I'm not 'for' weddings, but I believe, equally, that if I've taken the trouble to go attend one (and not just anyone's either - the one I'm talking about saw two very dear friends tie the 'Knuptial Knot' {that's one of Jayawant's - I can't take credit for it} as it were), then I owe it to them to at least, well, stick around long enough to see them "do" the phera thing and be pronounced man and woman (Erm, I don't like the sound of 'man and wife' - you mean he gets to stay whatever it was he started out as, but she changed from being her own person to being a 'wife'? What is that? A fourth gender?).
Anywhoo, so a bunch of us were at this wedding and we had a blast. So where's my grouse? Only in that just a handful of us stayed put for the actual puja and pheras, which happened, admittedly, really late into the night. We also 'accompanied' (kicking and screaming) the newly-weds to their hotel room, where we proceeded to annoy the living daylights out of them till the wee hours of the following morning. This, I like to think, they will remember. As will we.
I guess what this rant is about is something I've heard called 'group dynamics'. It's perfectly possible for people you know in their individual capacity to be very intelligent and fun, to metamorphose in the blink of an eye into mindless airheads, all about finding that next drink/party, whatever; to turn into, in other words, a gaggle of geese. Don't for a moment think I'm excluding myself from this gaggle - I squawked (or whatever it is that geese do) as loudly as the next person - but I did realise that this is not good news.
It leads me to draw one of two possible conclusions. Either I need to lighten the f*** up and not have such a chip on my shoulder about mindlessness, or, and this is the harder of the two to accept, I need to realise that people, as they grow older, tend to drift apart - we have less in common than we did in middle school, when our needle-work teacher Ludvina (bless her soul) whacked us all on the knuckles and we hated her equally, for example.
It would seem that this piece has taken on something of a life of its own - I didn't mean it to go quite this way, but as it is, it reads like a eulogy for the leopard which changed its shorts (Go read Pratchett, I say!). Hmm.

9 comments:

Sahil said...

as i like to say- all over the place. and perhaps a better read because of it ;)

a couple of bits were really interesting like the alliteration right at the beginning and the bit about knuptial knots. but wait, that wasn't one of yours, was it?

keep writing and i'll keep reading. and leaving vague comments like this one...

:-*

Harmony Siganporia said...

Spazza! Miss you lots! Now that I'm 'mobile' and CAN actually "do coffee" often (internal rhyme is a bloody crime, I say), you're gone! I'll see you in Delhi soon, though, ess? Much love...

Jazz said...

hey I liked reading it....I hav that same feeling too with my school friends..but there is something extremely refreshing about talking about school nd all those things we did or we went thru then....I liked the knuptial knot bit nd the title2....

Harmony Siganporia said...

Thank you, Jazz, but as I said, I can't claim credit for the 'knuptial knot' bit ;) I know what you mean, but you're still in the 8th grade, and you're MEANT to like talking about school, since you're still in it! Give it 10 years after you leave, and then you'll know what I'm on about! lol

Anonymous said...

harmony.
great read, especially the alliterations. in the beginning. NOT on line 4.
why wading?
when u say "wading", i view that with visions of vast wintry wastelands: vapourous, vacuous, and white, and two waders wallowing in the water, one vivacious, the other wet.
couldn't agree more on the "weddings are exercises in hypocritical solicitude and futile social bonding" bit.
nice blog! keep 'em coming!
- nirvana demon

Harmony Siganporia said...

@ Nirvana Demon - thank you! I've been meaning to reply for a while now, but have been out of town/busy/jobless(literally)-and-therefore-in-scavenging-mode, in chronological order. I agree with you about the Wadings bit (quite apart from the fact that this is how most Gujju people pronounce, in all seriousness, 'Weddings', of course) - there was much dew about, and the hem of my sari got very damp! *cheesy grin. Also, since I tend to stray loads when I write, I somehow got disengaged from the 'title' somewhere along the way :)

nirvana demon said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
nirvana demon said...

haha! "wadings". haha. got that....
this is like my colleagues (all amchi mathi amchi mansa types from interior maharashtra) who say "paper" for "pepper".
i really enjoy reading ure stuff. jolly good fun, i say!
(www.wiralmenongitis.wordpress.com)

Harmony Siganporia said...

As in, can you pass me some paper - this soup is so bland, ra! type of thing? Lol - we should list as many of these delightful mispronounciations as we can find, I say! The next time you're in Gujarat, be sure to try the dhoklas - delightful 'snakes' these be ;)