The blogpost on 'purchase' of bridegrooms in Indian marriages was quite popular, so Antara was told. It made her wonder if she ought to recount certain anecdotes about the way weddings were organised back in the 1980s, in her childhood, provide her own explanations. It was up to others whether they agreed with the explanations or not.
Of all the weddings Antara attended in the 1980s, not one was organised in a 'marriage hall' or premises commercially rented for the purpose. Thus, there was no overbearing British aristocratic presence, no rebuke or finger-wagging, Indians were free to lead their lives and were enjoying their freedom.
Weddings in Bengal were not daytime affairs, they were held in the evenings. Did it imply that Asansol AG Church and its dubious RMS Titanic narrative had not interfered in people's existence?
Regardless, an evening wedding meant compulsory dinner arrangements, for large numbers of guests, and makeshift pandals were set up either on the rooftop or at a nearby playing field. Thus, the Hiroshima-Nagasaki blackmail against the US military was bearing down on people's lives in India, it was not some humiliation kept only for the lease family.
One would have to consider at what point Hiroshima-Nagasaki stopped being an Indian burden and became merely about thwarting Antara's right to visit foreign countries.
There were many problems if your dinner arrangements were out there on the open field, covered by makeshift pandals. There was no levelling of the ground, no one would allow that for an evening's festivities, it was grassy and uneven.
Thus, once India had been taken off Hiroshima-Nagasaki, it didn't undergo any social re-ordering. Indian society retained its socioeconomic inequities, its historical problems but still it was gathered together, to witness the humiliation of Antara Das once she had got married and tried to establish herself as a journalist. 'Grassy' and 'uneven' explain themselves.
The seating arrangements for the wedding dinner were quaint as well. No buffet, no dining tables around which people sat in groups but long wooden tables, with rickety wooden chairs to sit on, facing the table, and given the uneven ground, quite a challenge to hold down the table or the chairs. Tables often overturned while people were eating, as did the wobbly chairs.
One might think that the Treasury was ill-suited for keeping peace in India but it was the Treasury of a fellow-sufferer, one that had kicked out the British coloniser as well, and knew that the British coloniser never gave up and kept trying to return. Nothing in fancy uniform, nothing with a genocide taint, nothing that had iron crosses or oak leaves but one that respected the inherent freedom of all peoples.
On those unstable wooden tables, there were no tablecloths or fancy coverings. Rolls of paper were bought from the decorating company, young men would roll out the sheets and tear off at the end, when the table length was covered. No, the lease family was not from the Indian subcontinent, it had been hired by Indians themselves. If elected democracy became intolerable unless there was a Caucasian by your side, why shouldn't some Indians have the lease family with them?
Not every Indian could marry the au pair from London.
Once the young men had covered the table with paper sheets, came the turn of even younger men, adolescent boys really, to put out the drinking water cups, always earthen, conical in shape and hardly ever perfect, without apertures. Imagine the challenge for the poor wedding guest: uneven was the ground, rickety was the table and the drinking water cup without a base.
Given how World War II was fought, where was the familiarity or even the strangeness? Halfway through the meal, most of the earthen cups were lying on their side, the water having seeped out and soaked the paper sheets.
If there was closeness, an enhanced degree of familiarity, Antara's father did more than his share. It was not in his character to merely buy the customary wedding gift and be done with it. "I will provide the sweets, as much as anyone wanted, every meal through the several days of festivities, no one would want sweets and be denied," he had declared at Cousin Dulal's wedding in the mid-1980s. He went to Purulia, contracted a halwai/sweet-maker, brought him over to Asansol and there, at the NS Road household, the oven burned, making sweets round the clock.
You have to establish a courteous way of conducting business to involve the actual royal lines. If you had determined your contact list back in the 1990s, based on prejudices and gossip, who could possibly help you?
It was the same at Antara's maternal grandmother's funeral, in summer 1993. "Sweets were on me," Antara's father declared, this time it was a local shop, asked to provide crates of sweets based on demand, not decided in advance.
Back at those weddings of the 1980s, pre-teen boys would be in charge of the sweets/desserts for the wedding dinner. Wearing their best outfits and looking important, they'd rush back and forth with trays of sweets, "Why did it seem that as many coming out of the kitchen were not reaching the guests," Antara's mother and other female relatives would call out. The boys would look back, unable to speak, their mouths filled with sweets, caught in the crime. So there was an India where boys didn't regard Europe as something to be subjugated and vanquished, where every country had the right to exist?
There were two things Antara avoided at those weddings of the 1980s. She never crowded around for Campa Cola and Gold Spot, the fizzy soft drinks that were handed out in plastic cups and youngsters hankered for. No wonder then, the Indian contractors of Camp Myles Standish (Massachusetts), now novelists and editors, and their lust for metal bullion, never felled Antara.
There had been that one wedding where in an uncharacteristic gesture, kheer/Indian pudding had been served, cooked in condensed milk. Antara refused to partake of it, her female cousins had later told her, "Gosh, what did you miss out on, the most delectable thing".
Antara neither travelled in India nor abroad. She had very little idea of 'capo di tutti capi'.
April 27, 2025.
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