Is 'Enoughness' a cultivable virtue?

                                         Is ‘Enoughness’ a Cultivable Virtue?

The wedding season is on.  With the pundits identifying a few auspicious dates for marriage, there is a mad scramble to book hotels and farm houses, parks and all available open spaces. The days of Barat ghar shaadis are over; they probably are only for the less privileged who are almost at the lower end of the social hierarchy. The middle class is slowly moving out of bharat ghars towards farm houses formerly used by the super rich classes. The Benz owners have now shifted to exotic palaces and seven star hotels to celebrate with flare and fanfare the wedding of their wards.

The swift and sudden elevation of the middle class seems at odds with its orchestrated cry against the economic distress it has been subjected to in recent times due to corruption in the higher echelons of the government. But the ostentatious rise in the economic status of the middle class nails the lie that it is a victim of corruption and not a perpetrator of corruption. The lavish decorations in plush farm houses, the deafening music of the latest Bollywood hits, the gung-ho outfits on women --that one sees on the TV serials with backless cholis that keep their  arms braceleted and bare matched by sequined colorful lehangas that trail the floor (that would embarrass even  Queen Victoria’s sartorial prudery) , the sparkling diamond and gold jewelry-- complemented by tuxedoed men dressed to the nines with shaggy or spiked hair styles and last but not the least,  the exotic cuisine that fills your stomach even by merely ogling at it make one wonder if it is a real or a reel show. Everyone assembled there including the senior citizens looked as though they were out of the teleframe.  Who dares to complain of power shortage when the air-conditioning of the wedding hall , the ball room, the adjoining bar counter and the dining hall sends real shivers down your spine unless you had a peg or two served by young, handsome bartenders. As the priest kept droning on and administering the seven vows to the young couple who were asked to circumambulate seven times the sacred fire,  the crowd kept waiting to make a beeline to dinner. But during that period, they were well served with snacks of all varieties besides tikkis and chillas and golgappas that were plenty available in the counter erected in a corner of the wedding hall. No one except the bride and the groom and their parents were at the florally decorated mandap where the sath pheras were taking place. Even the cameramen were more interested in clicking for posterity the celebrity guests who were making their late entry (how else will they be noticed and commented on as people with 24x7 busy schedule) rather than the protagonists of the day stepping in tow round the fire. The end of the pheras signaled the start of the deafening sound of loud Bollywood music. The title-tattle around the round tables reached a crescendo and it was difficult to listen to who was talking what to whom.  Just as the couple reached the specially erected platform to be greeted by the guests, people started moving towards the dining hall. It is amazing how much we Indians can pack in our alimentary canal that is normally 10 to 11 inches long with a diameter of 4 to 4 1/2 inches and with a capacity to hold around 40 ounces. The pre-dinner snacks were enough to last till breakfast next day, but the magnificent wedding feast with about fifty dishes that was both national and international was the event for which the crowd had assembled -though ostensibly their gracious presence was meant to discharge their obligation to the hosts who had invited them. No wonder why Indians are estimated to record an increase in cardiac illness s due to their ‘central obesity’ or in simpler terms, to the widening of their midriff.

The Big Fat Indian Wedding seems an anachronism in the context of the current Standard and Poor’s rating of Indian economy. It is amazing how the middle class that forms the backbone of the disgruntled and forever-whining aam admi cadre, unleashes its Aladdin’s genie at the time of wedding that lifts it phenomenally to a higher economic status evidenced in these BFIWs. For all the caution sounded by our  PM about our gold craze, and for all the cry orchestrated by the opposition that sees in the gold fever the economic mess by the government, the gold that glitters in these weddings seems to mock at all the political rant about our economy.

My mind was in a swirl as I drove back home after attending one such glittering wedding. Do we have to celebrate weddings in such vulgar ostentation? Should we go in for such extravagant lavish spread when rightly or wrongly the Parliament has passed the Food security Bill to provide foodgrains to 67% of India’s 1.2 billion people. The Bill certainly has affirmed that 80400000 people in India are in need of food security. How much food would have been wasted after overfilling the stomach of the wedding crowd? What would have been the cost of hiring a farmhouse? How many Kilowatts of power have been used to electrify the vast area of the wedding venue? What would have been the gasoline consumption by the attendees as the farmhouses are situated far away on the outskirts of the city? How many kilos of gold and silver, how many carats of diamond the bride must have had as a part of her expensive trousseau? Wouldn’t the huge money spent on solemnizing the nuptial vows of a young couple to give them the license to share a bed, have helped in rebuilding at least a few of the many thousands of families grievously affected by the Himalayan tsunami? Wouldn’t this money have helped in building schools for so many millions of children who have been given their legitimate right to education? The middle class constant lament sounding like a broken record that the rich business community –the well heeled class of society-hardly bestows thought on their hungry, poor and destitute fellow beings is like pot calling the kettle black. The Indian middle class seeks its right to have a lifestyle in keeping up with the Joneses but does not feel a sense of duty that they expect from the Joneses  to alleviate poverty and hunger of those in the lowest rung of the social ladder.

Is it possible to give up on an unwritten tradition that specifies a whole lot of pre-wedding and post-wedding functions causing enormous expenditure and still more enormous wastage of food, energy and gasoline? This does not include dowry, jewelry, and trousseau given to the bride.  Will traditional society frown upon weddings on a smaller scale to give legitimacy to two people coming together as man and wife? Will that in any way reduce the sanctity of marriage?  Will it be a lessening of joy and festivity associated with marriage? Nearly half a century ago, I recall my brother’s wedding where the traditional Brahmin family of the bride threw open the gates to  poor people, orphaned children and street beggars to partake of the wedding feast for three days and three nights. Those were the days when Gandhian simplicity was still in practice in some pockets of the society.  That was a wedding to be remembered, to be recalled and to be re-invented in modern times. I have deliberately used the word ‘re-invented’ as in our present  times, instead of feeding hungry mouths for three days, a substantial amount of money could be diverted towards capacity building of those poor lives that would give them a permanent lift up the social ladder.

We have forgotten our fundamentals that stress on simple living and high thinking. The famous Tamil saying ‘I know nothing except to think of the happiness of all my fellow beings.’ is the rephrasing  of the Senecan lines:

‘Since we live, since we live among human beings/ Let us cultivate humanity.’ Can our middle class now hold the torch and light up the Indian minds to see beauty, happiness and dignity in life without the extravaganza? Let us affirm  Schumacher’s philosophy that  small is also beautiful, thereby appreciating ‘enoughness’ in human needs and emphasizing "the aim ought to be to obtain the maximum amount of well being with the minimum amount of consumption."