by Swetha Ramachandran
[box]We have all attended some wedding that has had us bored out of our wits. Swetha Ramachandran tells us how she keeps herself occupied at such weddings, and gives us an interesting study of some of the characters one tends to meet.[/box]Weddings are generally meant to be those happy gatherings where you catch up with your childhood friends and cheek-pinching relatives; when everybody around is bursting with joy and enthusiasm, when there isn’t one dull moment.
Time for a reality check!
Weddings are not always the most enjoyable occasions, those are times when you are scrutinized with scanner eyes from all directions; where everything about you from your looks to your temperament is examined and critiqued within five minutes, when you wish the earth could just swallow you up or that you owned an invisibility cloak! And the situation is worse still, when you are compelled to attend the wedding of some aunt’s sister-in-law or a family friend’s niece!
So what can you do when, in spite of coming up with a million intelligent, ingenious reasons you end up in a wedding that you never intended to go to? How do you while away those seemingly never-ending three hours?
Weddings are fairly similar to page 3 parties, where everybody wants to show off and gain attention in their own way. So to begin with, the best thing to do would be to observe people. As soon as you delve into this job, you realize that it indeed takes ‘all kinds of people to make this world’. There are so many categories when it comes to people and the ones most often seen in weddings can be mainly classified into nosey parkers, the braggarts and the asset displayers.
The Nosey Parkers – They require no searching at all! Within ten minutes of entering a wedding hall, you can find a Nosey Parker making his/her way towards you, wanting to know everything about you, beginning with the ‘How are you related to the couple’ to the ‘Where do your cousin’s in-laws live’. And after the initial round of questioning they act like they have known you for ages. No wonder, as they already know half your life history!
The Braggarts – They need no introduction. All they can talk about is their first-rank-bagging kids, their well-furnished homes, their brand new car, their vacation… the list is endless! Even if you try to counter-brag, they somehow tactically turn the conversation towards themselves! So if you end up with a Braggart, all you can do to escape their clutches is to pretend you have some important errand to run or start conversations with somebody else. But if that other person also turns out to be a Braggart, well, tough luck!
The Asset Displayers – Here comes yet another set of people who are very easy to spot. They are indeed mobile jewellery shops, displaying an array of bangles, necklaces, rings, anything and everything that could be worn. They truly define the word ‘eye-catching’. Generally, they are not people to be feared as they do not pry into others’ affairs and are content in merely showing off what they own. But sometimes there occurs a worse combination of traits and an Asset Displayer turns out to be a Braggart too. In such cases the ears and eyes are bound to be tortured. So look out for such people and keep away!
Whilst most of the people fit into these categories, there are some that need to be classified under ‘miscellaneous’. Here it is a mixed bag; you have the annoyingly loud kids that use you as poles for their running-and-catching games, the perfectionists that have a problem with everything, from the arrangement of flowers in the decoration to the colour of the chairs, and the match makers, who are out there trying to ruin lives!
Although these categories of people starkly differ from one another, there is a universal uniting factor to everybody who attends a wedding. And that includes some of the standard dialogues and exclamations they make! The first, most common exclamation would be the ‘Oh how much you have grown’, a dialogue that keeps haunting you in every wedding from when you are twelve till you are twenty; one that is bound to get on your nerves irrespective of the frequency and number of times! (Come on, growing up is a natural process and they better stop exaggerating it!)
Next in line would be the ‘When did you become this talkative!’ Of course, not everybody would be bombarded with this question. But for those who unfortunately and unknowingly remained silent when they were a kid, (don’t ask me how they expect kids to have had ‘conversations’ with them) this question sure is a blood boiler!
And there is one last dialogue that has been repeated over and over again in every wedding that has ever been held in the history of the world and that is ‘We shall surely keep in touch.’ Everybody who has uttered this dialogue to that long lost relative would know the truth behind it. Of course, for a few days after the wedding, phone calls are made, picassa web albums shared, even postal addresses exchanged! But days pass by and the interest in staying in touch wanes away. And many months later, in another wedding, the same dialogue’s uttered, the entire process is repeated and the ‘long lost relatives’ are back in their coveted post, once again!
Be it the Nosey Parker or the Braggart, the Asset Displayer or the clichéd dialogue deliverer, their common, characteristic trait is their persistence. They don’t stop their prodding until they are satisfied with your reply, they will wait until you pay attention to their every word when they brag and will ensure that you have made a note of their jewellery from top to toe! So the question now is if you can ever successfully manage to dodge those prying questions, disappear from those microscopic eyes and drive away those clichéd questions. Unfortunately, there exists no standard or secret formula which relieves one from the clutches of these people. Rather, with experience and practice one can try understanding their personality, learn about their weaknesses and deduce their own modus operandi to escape their wrath! The general polite nod, patient look on the face and appropriate words uttered from time to time, would do the trick. And if nothing else works, there is always your trusted cell phone that can rescue you. But all said and done, if not for them, marriages would be back to being dull and boring for those innumerable ‘forced-to-attend-wedding sufferers’!
Fantasies, wild imagination, dreams, poetry, creative flashes, randomness, philosophy, silence, blah-ness; a little pinch of everything maketh Swetha. All that it takes to get her quirked up and enthusiastic is a dosage of good books, music or movies! With just two semesters away from being conferred with an undergraduate degree in Advanced Zoology and Biotechnology, she has now started spinning dreams about her specialization in genetics. So all you guys who want to make yourselves a clone, better get to know her!
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