Weddings are the oldest dating sites. The bride and groom take the stage, and the dance floor becomes a breeding ground for new love stories—or, for the less romantically inclined, one-night stands. Somewhere between the pheras and the paneer tikka, singles slip into corners and quiet rooms, scripting their own meet-cutes on someone else’s big day.
And bridesmaids don’t even have to catch the bouquet: the Sima Aunties are perfectly capable of walking up to you, placing the proverbial baton in your hand and announcing, with terrifying certainty, that you’re next.
I have been waiting for my moment on the sidelines of the mandap since I was 16. It was my cousin’s wedding, and I was wearing the first Anarkali suit of my life. As the bride and groom went round and round the fire, I sat very still, wearing a soft, conspicuous smile for anyone who cared to notice. My older cousins did. They made sure I never heard the end of it.
Now, as I hit past the “right age”, they are extremely concerned about my marriage prospects. Well, whose fault is it? If it is mine, then I don’t want to hear about it. That’s why I have stopped attending weddings of family members. It feels like a tender lamb entering the cave of hawks—nobody lets you flirt with men, and everybody wants to know why you are not married.
Weddings are where the unmarried are put on display, whether they like it or not. For better or worse, Indian shaadis don’t have a designated singles table, but the metaphorical one is always there. Mothers crack open their finest saris for their daughters and send them into these great matrimonial fairs. Aunties keep an eye out for eligible boys, collect intelligence on salaries, family backgrounds and these days they also find out Instagram handles.
And then there are the women who have already crossed the invisible deadline: the bride’s sister who suddenly discovers an urgent reason to be in the kitchen whenever an aunty comes looking, because she knows the conversation will inevitably end with, “Beta, aapka number kab aa raha hai?” When can we see you on the chopping block?
A bride’s sister at one grand Indore wedding spent the entire event on her toes. There were 5,000 errands to run and too many relatives to pamper. Chachaji needed scissors to trim his nose hair, Buaji needed rasgullas packed for the neighbours back home, and every passing guest seemed to develop an urgent need for chai immediately after finishing their last cup. All manageable. What she could not manage were the interrogations about when she planned to “settle down”.
“I have a boyfriend. We’ll get married two Decembers from now,” she told anyone who asked. Given that the groomsmen were available for a chat, shots and twerk on the dance floor, she knew she wasn’t exactly lying. She was manifesting.
The handsome, eligible bachelors came through for the weekend, slipping her flowers and booze. Did any of them ask for her hand in marriage? No. But they posed for cosy selfies with her, and those pictures did the trick. An ex watching her Instagram stories straightened up and slid into her DMs, asking to meet. It has been two Decembers since, and there is still no wedding on the cards, but at least they are together.
Being pretty at a wedding rarely goes to waste. Sometimes, it even reels a man back in.
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Good for the weekend
It’s not easy to show up solo to weddings. Watching the happy couple look deep into each other’s eyes and celebrate in front of everyone they love can make even the cynics tear up—with equal parts joy and sadness. It makes you want something: love, romance, a quick hookup, anything. The guests are too drunk on whiskey to pretend otherwise.
I, for one, have ugly-cried watching my best friends lock it down with the loves of their lives. There’s a chance I want what they have, or at least that’s how it feels in the moment. Since none of the relatives conducting surveillance around the venue is mine, I am blissfully anonymous. I am free to feel, laugh and party like an animal.
Sakshi Shivdasani, the host of the Moment of Silence podcast, is also a veteran in attending weddings of friends. Her co-host Naina Bhasin jokes that it is only kind of vacation she’s been having. These weddings must be a certain kind of colourful because Shivdesani now wants to ban groomsmen and bridesmaids from having sex. Apparently, they are doing too much of it. The singles performing thumkas on the dance floor want to be looked at, pursued, hit on. So, it happens.
A friend from Mangalore has collected an impressive roster of groomsmen simply by attending weddings. They will probably be watching her Instagram stories for years to come. The sweet boy she was paired with at a Catholic wedding was not her type, but made for excellent company nonetheless. He may have misread the situation, because he left promising to visit her in London. Another eager boy at another wedding offered to take her on a long drive in Dubai.
Every time she needed a napkin or a refill, they were ready to help on their knees. She could easily make bad boys good for a weekend. We should all learn her ways because she can also dodge her relatives by appearing too wobbly with spiked juice in her system.
Now that another friend has sent out invitations for her December wedding, I am back in the ethnic-wear section of Myntra. I must bring my A-game. There will be a beach nearby, a free supply of beer and, if the wedding gods are kind, a healthy population of financially stable men.
Don’t get me wrong: I am perfectly happy to play the tail to my soon-to-be-bride friend, patting the sweat off her face, fixing her outfit and being there for her on the biggest day of her life. But I also know that standing next to a bride comes with its own kind of visibility. And I intend to make the most of it.
Views are personal.
(Edited by Saptak Datta)