Fend for self

The scramble for seats in weddings amply speaks of today’s dog-eat-dog world.

Those were the days when a family would attend a wedding, only when the bride’s/groom’s both parents would call on that family, and would invite them formally with vermillion coated rice-grains, placed on a well-crafted wedding card. Call it our flexibility, or informal attitude, or our broader perspective in looking at things around. In today’s busily engineered life, in many cases, the entire family troops in to a wedding function, even with an email invite. (After all at least for a day, you are exempted from the hassles of whipping up food for the family, right?)

And again, those were the days when invitees had to be coaxed, cajoled and coerced into heading towards lunch/dinner hall, to have food. (Of course, even today there are some folks, for whom ‘honour’ holds higher place than ‘hunger’). So, they ought to be invited with repeated requests to have food, which they consider as recognition of their ‘status’ of belonging to the groom’s party.      But, nowadays in many weddings, one is forced to follow the ‘fend for oneself’ format (particularly when both parents of bride/groom are stuck on the wedding dais, and that you/your family know only one of those and none else). So, the minute the food time is announced, we rush towards the food hall, by sloughing off our egos, inhibitions, hang-ups, and even throwing etiquettes to the wind. (Just like an aggressive bull, charging towards the red rag, the moment the rag is flapped at it). Remember, each one to himself/herself, right?

At times, we even conveniently overlook the formality of wishing the newly weds, in case of having to wait in serpentine queues. After all, greetings can wait. But nabbing a seat in the food hall is much more of a stupendous feat, especially in today’s wedding halls, heaving with multitude of human-folks. Amazingly, even when the people are still having their food, the next batch of people (wanting to have food), would have already stationed themselves behind them, (like serried row of soldiers), and would be literally breathing down their necks. To double up the embarrassment of people having their food, the people who’d be standing behind, would be gawking at the former’s plantain leaves, piled with food. And, would be even informing others, about the dishes on the wedding menu! (Just as a whistle-blower tipping off the CBI, on the whereabouts of an underworld criminal!).
  
Really the people having food would be squirming, and would be waiting to get up, and slink away at the earliest. Truly, it makes one wonder on whatever has happened to our refined and polished behaviour/manners in these modern times? Indeed this scramble for seats in weddings, amply speaks of today’s dog-eat-dog world. But, are we behaving like one too? Well, I’n’t sure!