Summers I can sweat by. Monsoons I can puddle through. Winters I can shiver away. But there is one season I just cannot get past without grumbling.

The Wedding Season. 'Season' because some fourteen weddings sprout up at you from all over the place. There's this sudden barrage of relatives (near ones and not-so-near ones, adults, kids and babies) that descends on the happy family like flapping ducks, shrieking, screeching, and just generally there to make merry.

Champagne flows. So does money.

Everyone scrambles for an invitation. You may have recently sparked off the biggest of rows with the happy family, but you still expect them to forgive you and dole out that embossed card.

As far as the happy family goes, they hate you, and are hoping they won't have to feed you, but invite you they will, and feed you they must. It's a norm. It's a tradition. And nobody disobeys norms. And nobody is untraditional. Particularly the happy family.

And as far as you're concerned, well, after all that name-calling that happened the other day, you don't really want to go. You're actually wishing that the groom's horse will run wild with him still on it, and that the bride's mascara will smudge, but go you will. Go you must. You're holding that prized rectangle of glittering paper. Besides, there will be good food and drink. And it will be free.

Among the national spread are four kinds of starters, six types of chaats, six kinds of salads, and four types of desserts. Plus, you get to dig into Indian food from the north, south, east, west and middle.

Among the international spread there's Chinese, and Italian, and Spanish, and Mexican, and you name it and it will find itself onto your fork.

One looks around for some interesting faces to chat with. The men are a strict no-no. They only come with their lovely girlfriends. In more devastating cases, they come with their pregnant wives and children. The ones loitering around as singles look too forlorn to be able to talk about astronauts or lawn tennis.

The women? Well... they're eyeing one's jewellery and dying to know how one's elder brother is doing. Someone's hair suddenly looks straighter than it has always been. Someone's wearing a scandalously audacious backless. And someone's gushing hysterically about her latest boyfriend.

One turns towards the bride and groom. They're on a brightly lit stage, grinning blankly at a dolled-up face that peeps out from behind a humongous shiny box. At regular intervals, they shuffle around to accommodate their two titanic families for a spate of happy family photographs. A flash flashes and three-dozen pearls are captured.

Hungry and bored, one walks towards the food. The camera follows one there. And keeps a viewfinder on the amount taken and the amount left. One smiles politely, making sure that coriander doesn't find its way first into the tiny gaps between one's teeth and then on to celluloid.

The live band plays on. Hammering out the hottest Hindi numbers, the band is probably the only element of the gilded evening that keeps one alive. One dances gracefully. On rare occasions one dances wildly. Rare because it's not always that one finds a similar somebody who is willing to look ruffled and untidy after all the wrist jingling and waist wriggling.

And while one dances, one's mother and father are dumped with questions about how old one is, and whether one is married or not. Whether one is a postgraduate and whether one is willing to spend the rest of one's life with an American Desi.

One makes small talk with all the aunties and uncles, alternating between cooing at the bundled-up babies and saving one's ghagra from being trampled upon by the bigger raucous brats.

Some more talk about the weather and everybody's health. Some more dodging the camera and rescuing the ghagra. And then one is finally ready to go back to the lovely place where one feels at home -- Home to be precise.

Duty done, smiles smiled, goodbyes gurgled, one walks up to the car, oh-dearing at the next couple's bonding ceremony that one will have to attend.

Bhavna Giani plans to keep her wedding list very, very short.

Illustration: Lynette Menezes

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