I have attended Punjabi weddings (well of course), Marathi wedding, Muslim wedding, Gujarati wedding and now finally i went to one of my very close friends' wedding in Rajasthan - a Marwadi wedding. And i must say it was quite an experience.
To start with - sweets. My goodness, i am very sure that even if there is an acute shortage of water or if there is a famine or even if they are starving or anything such severe happens in Rajasthan, they won’t stop eating sweets. And to eat on one's own is a different issue, but to make others eat forcefully is what was different here. We normally feed others' sweets in humor and mostly only to the close relatives only. But in Rajasthan, we were treated with sweets almost by everyone and multiple times and all these with extremely serious faces and after being told that it was a part of their tradition. It seemed like if we don't eat, we will be beaten. And so even when our bellies were pleading us to stop dumping more sweets into them, we couldn't. We urged and fought and made so many excuses, but they were just not ceasing in their mission and in fact that was motivating them even more to make us suffer. A human tendency - make the sufferers under your authority suffer even more.
The dining place during marriage had more sweet counters than any other ones. The most surprising and inexplicable thing that seemed to me was that people over there used to consider sweet dishes as the main course and then went on to eat chappatis, rice and vegetables and yes believe me, they ended it all with snacks like chat or something else.
Then there are these infinite number of customs, procedures, traditions and superstitions which i believe is what makes Indian culture so unique. There are innumerous little things that the bride and the groom are supposed to do and an equal number of things that they are forbidden to.
One very strange custom was that the grooms' parents cannot be present at the time when the couple are exchanging vows. Why would a custom prevent a couple from attending the wedding of their beloved son? May be there is some reason for that, but i totally don’t understand it. Another intriguing one was that the bride goes back to her home after marriage and next day she does to and fro from the grooms' place at least 4-5 times. And they finally are united in the bond of love (hope you understand how) on the second night. The next day is also kept for the little games aimed at helping the bride to get familiar with the grooms' family and most importantly being a buddy to her life partner.
Overall a great experience. I got to see a totally new kind of wedding, new set of customs, traditions and a new place as well. And to think that India has so many different castes and cultures, which have their own kinds of weddings and traditions and still there are some similarities between all is absolutely amazing. Hope i get to see many more different kinds and hope they are as mysterious as the Big Fat Marwadi wedding.
Friday, February 18, 2011
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
The Mob Mentality
I always had this question in my mind. What motivates a mob to perform the actions that it performs. What must be the inspiration to so many people to go about destroying public properties. How exactly do such crowd gather and what keeps them motivated all time along.
Political hooliganism - heard of it, read about it, saw on television, but had never experienced it before my trip to Bengaluru recently.
I was on a weekend trip to Bengaluru to meet one close friend. The trip was supposed to be very hectic as i was going to reach on Saturday morning and had my return bus on Sunday evening. But, as it always happens, Murphy's great law always prevails. With great difficulty, i had managed to convince my managers to let me leave a little early from office on Friday. And there i was - eagerly waiting for my bus to come and take me to the adventurous voyage. It was a semi-sleeper bus(don't know why it is supposed to be called that, either one can sleep in a sleeper bus or go sitting on a seater bus, but in a semi-sleeper, one can neither sleep nor sit properly). And as i had expected i couldn't sleep most of the night.
The best thing about the bus journeys that i like is the little breaks on the highway restaurants. Though, i must admit that the quality of those restaurants has certainly gone upwards in the last few years. I usually wander around on the breaks, checking out the girls getting down from other buses (again thanks to Mr. Murphy, girls in other buses are always prettier than mine). I also do the usual observations job, trying to map the behavior of people with their faces. I believe that the behavior that people showcase, especially when they are alone, says a lot about them.
Next morning, i succeeded eventually in my long quest for sleep and from what i remember, i slept at around 5 in the morning. But, it was going to be short lived. At around 7, i woke up to find many people from my bus getting down with curious looks on their faces. I was totally clueless, but too tired to stand up and find out on my own. So i kept half-sleeping on my seat and after a while was relieved to find that the bus had again started. We reached a certain highway spot again and the driver took a lengthy halt of around half an hour over there.
The bus stopped again at around 9 and this time i was fully awake and curious enough to learn what was happening. I found out from my neighbors and other fellow bus travelers that there was some Karnataka bandh announced and so some mob had stopped the bus. I called up my friend to verify that it was correct. And there it all started. The most agonizing wait of my journey. There was a mob of around 30-40 people that had stopped the traffic on the highway. Our bus was 4th in the queue when it had started and finally when we were allowed to go, according to a rough guess, there would have been some 5000-6000 vehicles in the long long queue that had formed. The mob had placed the front truck horizontally on the highway, preventing anyone to cross the laxman rekha that they had formed. They started burning tires and it was clear to us that it was going to be a big tiresome day.
What would one do when one is stuck in midst of a highway in a totally unknown land, where one doesn't even understand the language people residing over there speak? And when there is a big violent mob, which looks as hungry as a wild cat that was only given cabbage to eat for 3 years. Add to that the afternoon heat, exaggerated because of the air-conditioned pleasures that the body has enjoyed inside the semi-sleeper bus. And above all that, you are carrying this sad feeling of not being able to make it on time to meet your friend.
What did i do? Made new friends, talked to strangers, got to know some really good ones, wandered around aimlessly, ate at a small cafeteria cum home and tried to learn the mentality of the mob. One thing i was totally sure, none of the hooligans knew why there doing what they had been asked to do. But the power that they were able to showcase was unparalleled. To completely bring to a halt a crowd of about 1 lakh or more with no apparent reason known to them is something i had never seen before. They were burning tires endlessly and for continuously 6 hours, they didn't rest or oblige under pressure and didn't let go any brave-hearts who occasionally tried to break the check-post they had made. Hats off to their courage, dedication and above all, their power - even though it was used for a destructive purpose.
Finally, after some alleged meeting somewhere else and on a phone call from someone somewhere, the mob let us go at around 3.30 pm in the afternoon. I could finally reach Bangalore at 6 pm. And despite another setback of the local transport buses not functioning in the city due to the same bandh, i could not afford to waste any more time and reached my final destination by 7 pm. But, overall it was a good experience and a firsthand classroom to understand the mob mentality.
I was on a weekend trip to Bengaluru to meet one close friend. The trip was supposed to be very hectic as i was going to reach on Saturday morning and had my return bus on Sunday evening. But, as it always happens, Murphy's great law always prevails. With great difficulty, i had managed to convince my managers to let me leave a little early from office on Friday. And there i was - eagerly waiting for my bus to come and take me to the adventurous voyage. It was a semi-sleeper bus(don't know why it is supposed to be called that, either one can sleep in a sleeper bus or go sitting on a seater bus, but in a semi-sleeper, one can neither sleep nor sit properly). And as i had expected i couldn't sleep most of the night.
The best thing about the bus journeys that i like is the little breaks on the highway restaurants. Though, i must admit that the quality of those restaurants has certainly gone upwards in the last few years. I usually wander around on the breaks, checking out the girls getting down from other buses (again thanks to Mr. Murphy, girls in other buses are always prettier than mine). I also do the usual observations job, trying to map the behavior of people with their faces. I believe that the behavior that people showcase, especially when they are alone, says a lot about them.
Next morning, i succeeded eventually in my long quest for sleep and from what i remember, i slept at around 5 in the morning. But, it was going to be short lived. At around 7, i woke up to find many people from my bus getting down with curious looks on their faces. I was totally clueless, but too tired to stand up and find out on my own. So i kept half-sleeping on my seat and after a while was relieved to find that the bus had again started. We reached a certain highway spot again and the driver took a lengthy halt of around half an hour over there.
The bus stopped again at around 9 and this time i was fully awake and curious enough to learn what was happening. I found out from my neighbors and other fellow bus travelers that there was some Karnataka bandh announced and so some mob had stopped the bus. I called up my friend to verify that it was correct. And there it all started. The most agonizing wait of my journey. There was a mob of around 30-40 people that had stopped the traffic on the highway. Our bus was 4th in the queue when it had started and finally when we were allowed to go, according to a rough guess, there would have been some 5000-6000 vehicles in the long long queue that had formed. The mob had placed the front truck horizontally on the highway, preventing anyone to cross the laxman rekha that they had formed. They started burning tires and it was clear to us that it was going to be a big tiresome day.
What would one do when one is stuck in midst of a highway in a totally unknown land, where one doesn't even understand the language people residing over there speak? And when there is a big violent mob, which looks as hungry as a wild cat that was only given cabbage to eat for 3 years. Add to that the afternoon heat, exaggerated because of the air-conditioned pleasures that the body has enjoyed inside the semi-sleeper bus. And above all that, you are carrying this sad feeling of not being able to make it on time to meet your friend.
What did i do? Made new friends, talked to strangers, got to know some really good ones, wandered around aimlessly, ate at a small cafeteria cum home and tried to learn the mentality of the mob. One thing i was totally sure, none of the hooligans knew why there doing what they had been asked to do. But the power that they were able to showcase was unparalleled. To completely bring to a halt a crowd of about 1 lakh or more with no apparent reason known to them is something i had never seen before. They were burning tires endlessly and for continuously 6 hours, they didn't rest or oblige under pressure and didn't let go any brave-hearts who occasionally tried to break the check-post they had made. Hats off to their courage, dedication and above all, their power - even though it was used for a destructive purpose.
Finally, after some alleged meeting somewhere else and on a phone call from someone somewhere, the mob let us go at around 3.30 pm in the afternoon. I could finally reach Bangalore at 6 pm. And despite another setback of the local transport buses not functioning in the city due to the same bandh, i could not afford to waste any more time and reached my final destination by 7 pm. But, overall it was a good experience and a firsthand classroom to understand the mob mentality.
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