SIGHT & SOUND
Four weddings and many funerals
Amita Malik

There is the old saying: "In the midst of life we are in death", and like many old sayings it is constantly proved to be right. A horrible week with Suryanarayana, with alarming reports about Pramod Mahajan, the riots over the dargah in Vadodara and, above all, 22 Hindus being killed by militants in an obscure J and K village. We do live in troubled times and the viewer, steeped in killings and tragedies is sometimes forced to seek something cheerful to keep going.

Well, in the last few weeks I have been watching an interesting programme on NDTV called The Big Fat Indian Wedding. I have sat through a Muslim wedding in UP, the quietest of the lot, with the bridegroom from the USA but from a local family as also the girl. Everything was polite and orderly and the clear explanations of rituals from both families and the anchor made it an enjoyable experience. Next we moved to Kolkata for a very noisy, chaotic wedding. There was so much noise that we could hardly hear what the anchor was saying. In any case, she got all her Bengali terms wrong, "bo-rone" for borrone, Shibu Drishtri for Shubo-Drishtri, and what upset me most was when the bride’s brothers, who carried their rather heavy sister on a stool for the saptapadi actually wore suits, no doubt for the TV cameras—no self-respecting Bengali brothers would wear anything but a traditional dhoti-Punjabi.

The Christian wedding in Goa was tremendous fun, everybody smiling and laughing and with many local customs which added spice to the ceremony, both the houses of the bride and bridegroom overflowing with all generations taking their respective parts, then the solemn church ceremony and the bride and bridegroom leaving, after much teasing, in a shower of confetti and rice. Also extremely jolly was the Coorg wedding, again with fascinating local customs. And here the older members of the family outdid the younger ones with their firm commitment to customs not to speak for the food, which was outstanding. But at the end of it all, we were informed about the courses item by item, from meals for 100 guests to what the priests charge and what the wedding sari costs and the jewellery and, in the case of Bengal, the large rohu fish sent to the bride’s. Well, it was a very tidy sum, running into lakhs and strangely similar in the total, no matter how different the customs, the menus and the part of India.

Well, expenses, not always divulged, also seem to characterise the elections in different parts of India. Amma’s promises in Chennai very different from those of Buddhadeb Babu in West Bengal. Kerala was a little beyond me, very complicated and too many personalities. But there was the lighter side. Sagarika Ghose, who never lets anyone else get a word in, met more than her match in Kolkata. Her programme Kolkata Adda did focus on interesting personalities and Sagarika did her total Bengali act in Dacca saris and a large bindi on her forehead. But incidentally she had arrived with only one black blouse and though this was fine with her black Dacca sari it stood out in disharmony with her white Dacca sari with a green border. So when she asked Moon Moon Sen to mention anything typically Bengali, she said wickedly: "A black blouse with a white and green sari". And that was not the only thing which stopped Sagarika in her endless flow of words, where she talks most and then asks a very vocal participant: "Say it quickly". The CPI M and Trinamool were having one of it.

The CPI(M) secretary, Mohd. Salim when she interrupted him in full flow said: "Let me talk first" and the Trinamool gent cut her short with "Let me finish". Like Karan Thapar, Sagarika will sooner or later realise that talking too much, talking too fast and interrupting every few seconds does not lead to good interviewing or the pleasure ofviewers.

I am sorry I am too depressed to comment on coverage of all the tragic events this week, except to say that I think Suryanarayana’s wife Manjula and her children could have been spared so much intrusion by the cameras.