Invited with the whole family!

When eight to ten lakh rupees or more is spent to feed a thousand-odd people at a wedding, I can think of no greater waste. The more people you invite to your wedding, the more certain you can be that you're throwing money at unnecessary, often useless, even harmful people. Of all the happy couples I've seen so far, none had particularly lavish weddings! This excessive wedding spending would rank high on any list of wasteful expenses.

There are many who toil like beasts year after year just to save money for wedding expenses, some take massive loans, and some even sell their land simply to fund a wedding. The bride's family almost always suffers for this. Sadly, it's usually the groom's side that imposes this burden on them. Why do they impose it? Ask them and they have ready answers: Don't we have prestige to maintain? Are we antisocial? It's in the scriptures, that's how it must be done. (I've heard my uncle say that some religious text dictates that the first night after marriage must be spent on a bed provided by the bride's father!) So-and-so invited us to their function, how can we not invite them to ours? Our boy is a precious gem, surely the bride's family will spend this much! This is social/family custom, we can't go against tradition! You'll be giving ornaments and furniture to your daughter anyway, what's the problem? People always have such lame justifications ready.

Dear groom's family, practicing religion with someone else's money isn't religion, it's irreligion. Doing good deeds with someone else's money isn't virtue, it's sin. When the money doesn't come from your own pocket, it's easy enough to manufacture and recite such scriptures! If you want to follow scriptures, follow them with your own money! What's the point of religious observance with someone else's money? Will the merit be yours if you practice religion with someone else's money? Or have you taken up a mission to forcibly help people earn merit? Do you think God is a fool? And why is your prestige in such a sorry state? Is that prestige so fragile that it needs to be maintained with someone else's money! You're surely not antisocial, but if you have the courage, why not shoulder the responsibility of upholding society yourself instead of dumping it on the bride's father? There's so much more in the scriptures. How many of those do you follow? Or is it more comfortable to perform rituals with someone else's money? Doesn't issuing such nonsensical fatwas clash with your education and taste? By the way, where exactly in the scriptures is that mentioned? Even if it is, why should the bride's father bear responsibility for some scripture-maker's arbitrary rule? And the bride's father wasn't invited to so-and-so's function, was he? Then why should he spend money to fill your belly? If you don't splurge money at your precious gem of a son's wedding, will the gem turn to clay? Brother, I see your gem is second-rate! So much for your son! Keep your customs in your own pocket, won't you? If you have even minimal self-respect, follow your customs with your own money. A custom that requires you to sit with your tongue hanging out, gaping at someone else's pocket—is that a custom or begging? What they'll give or not give the girl at marriage, talking about it this way doesn't require rocket science to understand. There's a difference between gifts and dowry. With self-respect and dignity, one would hesitate to accept even gifts. And when someone actually asks for or demands it, that's called plain extortion in simple Bengali. Looking at some grooms, you really can't tell if they've come to get married or taken to the streets with a begging bowl!

This enormous expense is made simply to feed a bunch of people one meal, none of whom are starving or destitute. The thousand-plus people you spend lakhs feeding—notice that except for one or two, you'll never find any of them beside you in times of trouble or need. When you're in crisis, many of those you consider indispensable at your function will stop taking your calls! The very dignitary you phone two days before the event to respectfully remind about the function—in times of trouble, you'll see a completely different face from that same person! Those you invite to your function, their busyness during your time of trouble will truly astonish you. Here's something even more amusing. Think about it—eighty percent of the guests who come invited or uninvited to your function, you'll never meet again in this lifetime! See who we so eagerly and hopefully invite to our functions! Though saying all this doesn't help much! A madman's happiness is all in his mind!

To arrange this show-off single meal, many fathers have to work themselves to the bone to gather money. I've seen many become destitute trying to meet wedding expenses. What should have happened was finishing the wedding in a very limited scope with minimal expense, saving all that unnecessary money for their own future instead of such pointless spending. But it happens the other way around. Because of such reckless wedding expenses, many have to pay off loans for years after the wedding. Does it really make sense to spend lakhs and lakhs just to show off or to bring unknown or half-known people and feed them to their hearts' content? Think about it—at weddings, people feed those who are sick from various ailments due to overeating! Those who suffer from diseases because they can't eat enough—no one feeds them at weddings. In this world, people put food more in the mouths of those who don't need it.

Rather than such pointless spending of lakhs on unnecessary people at weddings, spending that money to visit a few favorite places would be better for the marital relationship. Instead of spending eight to ten lakhs on a wedding, starting a new business with that money or expanding an existing one would be very beneficial for the future. Rather than slaughtering big cows and goats to feed people, investing that money somewhere and using the returns to enjoy kacchi-biriyani with the whole family at restaurants or picnics would be much better. The money we spend feeding all those familiar but random people at weddings could easily buy our food for several years. We feed some people at weddings, many of whom are responsible for much of our sorrow. Funny thing is, when spending on weddings, how necessary every expense seems—thinking about it later makes us laugh!

Money that isn't spent for one's own or one's family's or loved ones' happiness and satisfaction, or for human welfare, is completely wasted. The more someone has the ability and willingness to spend money, the more people crowd around them like cats. When money disappears, so do the hangers-on! Let me speak from my own experience. In this life, setting aside other wasteful spending on people, of all those for whom I've spent money like water paying restaurant bills, not even 0.5 percent have ever inquired about me even once, let alone standing by me in times of trouble! I've foolishly spent time and money on those for whom my death would mean nothing—yes, I still do! Many of them have tried to get me into trouble or succeeded. A person who never does anything for anyone and helps no one—no one bothers with them, and no one particularly harms them either. People bother most with those who have helped them. Benefactors get scolded. And those who help others without payment inevitably, inescapably face sorrow in life!

The money for expensive clothes for just one day's few hours of showing off could buy cheap clothes for several poor people. When do people wear those lakh-rupee sarees, lehengas, punjabis bought for weddings, except on the wedding day? That one day's arrangement rots as precious memories in a corner of the wardrobe for life. I've seen many who spend hundreds of rupees on each wedding card. Those who pointlessly spend lakhs on venue rental for wedding functions often can't spare even ten rupees for the poor! When hundreds of portions of cooked food for people who couldn't or didn't come get thrown in the dustbin, how many say, "We didn't need to invite so many people!" After pouring money like water, we ourselves sometimes regret and say, "Ah, if only I had some more money now, I could do such-and-such work!" People might cheat you in times of trouble, but money never cheats. Those on whom we squander money, we never find them in times of trouble, and as a bonus punishment, we lose that money too. Because we waste money in the wrong places, we don't have money to spend in the right places.

Those you're trying to impress by serving expensive platters, beef bhuna, mutton rezala, or chicken roast with money earned through hard labor or from selling land—they'll finish eating all that delicious food, and while walking away rubbing their bellies, they'll say..."These people put too little salt in the meat!"