A Postmodern Wedding

"Hope is a dangerous word" - just like any other pearls of wisdom that I am only too eager to pass on to the next available ear, this too has been derived from the ever-wise and reflective dream factory that is Hollywood. Do we ever pause to consider how drastically films have affected our humdrum lives, and how in moments of joy and sorrow some of us look up to movies as templates that our real-life actions and words should subscribe by? No other art form in human history has provided us with as many pertinent points of comparison in our lives as films (or for that matter TV shows) have.

How many people would you expect to quote a line from Shakespeare (with the exception of to be or not to be...)? If you're a testosterone-pumped dude with delusions of machismo, The Godfather and Scarface lend an almost scripture like importance to govern your make-believe life by. You even pick up the mannerisms and gestures of movie people (Robert De Niro and Al Pacino being the oft-employed culprits to any number of Bollywood actors). You name your children after your favorite movie/TV characters (ever wondered why so many Sanas that you know were incidentally born in the early 80s in the wake of Ankahi?). You revere your favorite movie and TV heroes more than real life heroes. No matter how joyous and ecstatic your happiest moment is or how harrowingly gloom-ridden your saddest, it always pales in comparison to the highs and lows of the lives that you see on screen. There is no appropriate music to play in the background when she breaks your heart; the mise'en'scene isn't quite appropriate for the struggle within you which demands more drama.

Therefore, our passions are not strong enough; our anger lacks the correct amount of resentment; our grief is not heartbreaking enough; all our emotional outbursts come out too strong or too weak - never quite spectacular enough to fit the definition of a cinematic emotional outburst. We are not filmy enough. We will never win any Oscars.

When we want to drive a point across, our diction and body fails us. Either the body language is not right, or we're forced to think up the right word in an increasingly claustrophobic moment of heated, unabated passion, or worse - we get stuck on a word and have to put considerable amount of effort to get past that debilitating fix. Unlike, actors on screen who do it flawlessly and with conviction, our faces and bodies are not trained and we are never given a strong script. It is upon us, and only us, to get by through this life that we desperately want to measure up to the films that we feed on.

However, occasionally our cultural climate doles out opportunities to compensate for the cinematic inadequacy of our lives. This prospect is delivered in the form of the greatest festival in one's life - his or her wedding. This is the one day you get to be the star of your film. During the circus show that is our desi wedding, you as the hero/heroine get center stage (literally) and the culmination of your love story (even if the wedding is arranged) is captured on video. Professional cameramen are sought to shoot these "films", and get professional editing and mixing jobs done on them. However, the finished product is by no means a proper three-hour film. Replete with a title sequence where the cast of the wedding is introduced. The bride, the groom, the parents, the in-laws, the siblings, the cute wretched Babbloos, Tinkus, Munnis... the lot.

The plot of the film may be predictable: the ultimate genre film, and most likely will have no dialogue, the ultimate genre film being the ultimate musical, and lacks seriously in the character development department, no mention of the wooden acting all around, but the film according to its budget may boast of decent production value: make up, costumes, sets and etc. It even has fancy dissolves to make it look slick. Elaborate song and dance sequences are choreographed for weeks and executed on the confetti laden pre-show that is mehndi. The emotional culmination comes at rukhsati which marks the teary eyed conclusion of the festive proceedings. And after two, three weeks of nauseating reruns of the film, real world awaits the stars of the film to go on with their tick tock lives.