Go Easy on the Confetti, Please!

Go Easy on the Confetti, Please!

By

Gyan C A Fernando

Illustrated by N. Senthilkumaran

Life sometimes brings up pleasant little surprises!

Take this morning, for instance: I discovered that I could get married for just Rs30! Not that I want get married again, but isn’t that a pleasant little surprise?

I wasn’t actually thinking of marriage as such when I turned up at the local Registrar’s Office this a.m. to get a copy of my sister Babsie’s Birth Certificate for her. 
I turned up in good time but had to hang around a bit whilst the staff booted up computers, dusted ancient ledgers, adjusted their bra straps and re-pinned their saris.

This is when I spotted a notice on the wall laying out the tariff for various services from the Registrar.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the cost of getting married is only Rs30. Mind you; it was much cheaper when I got married in the 70’s. Then it cost me only Rs10 but then, this is 2012.

Two cups of tea and you are married

Let us get this right! Thirty Rupees is nothing these days. A basic cup of plain tea starts at Rs20. So getting the Mathematics right, you could get married for the price of two cups of tea and still have Rs10 change!

What really gets me is the astronomical cost of a “wedding” which of course is quite a different affair from a “marriage”. 

A “wedding” is just the razzmatazz that goes with a “marriage”.

A “wedding” is a very, very expensive way of having a bit of jollity, the sort of jollity we used to have with a bottle of Arrack, some “bites” and a bit of Baila in our University days.

Let me give you an example: I was “invited” to my lovely niece Shanika’s wedding a few years ago. (It was not exactly an invitation. More of a “decree” or “summons” from her, but then she is one of my favourite nieces.)  

It was to be a traditional “Poruwa” type job and she wanted me to do the Poruwa bit…you know the bit where the thumbs of the groom and the bride are tied together with a gold string and water poured etc.

Simple job, I thought. Easy, Peasy!

 I am rather fond of Shanika and even though I was living in another country at that time, I agreed to attend. I had no choice!

Doom and Gloom

Now comes the first nasty surprise: It was to be a “traditional” Kandyan Wedding and I had to get into a Kandyan fancy dress, she said. You know the Nilame type thing, don’t you?

I don’t want to look like the late King Sri Wickrema Rajasingha of Kandy

 “No way!” I said firmly.

“I don’t want to look like the late King Sri Wickrema Rajasingha of Kandy”, I explained. “I have a perfectly good black dinner suit and a James Bond style black bow tie, Darling, and I am going to wear it!” I said emphatically.

“No Uncle!” she said equally emphatically. “You can’t wear a black bow tie. You might get mistaken for the Head Waiter!” she giggled.

“Anyway you would look like a very, very old James Bond, Uncle! Ha! Ha! Ha!” she added unnecessarily. 
 

That did hurt!

“Ha! Ha! Ha! All right, all right, all right!” I said.

“I will buy a red bow tie from Tie Rack at Heathrow, but what is this nonsense about Head Waiters? Surely, you are getting married at home, aren’t you?” I asked with an impending feeling of doom.

“Don’t be silly, Uncle! I am getting married at the Intercontinental!

Nobody gets married at home these days, Uncle!” she said.
 “In which century are you living in, Uncle?” she asked shrilly, in a voice one octave higher.

 “Have you gone mad, Darling?” I asked bluntly and in a deep bass, in a voice one octave lower. Like Johnny Cash.

“No Uncle! You are just an old fogey and a Scrooge!” she retorted sweetly and cheerfully.

“Why don’t you elope?” I suggested helpfully. “Think of the money that you will be saving Darling!”

“You are a silly, Uncle!” she laughed. “All right, you can wear a dinner jacket. See ya soon!” she said.

***

All didn’t seem to be fine on the wedding front when I got to Sri Lanka. Her parents didn’t look very happy and I couldn’t help thinking that they had been crying.

It is normal for parents to cry at weddings but not before the wedding and it took me a while to realize why this was.

There were constant, irritating phone calls from Bank Managers and discussions of interest rates and overdrafts. The whole household was littered with wedding brochures and bank statements!

Breakfast at Tiffany’s was cheaper

At today’s prices, her wedding dress cost more than Audrey Hepburn’s dress in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”.

Then there was that mercenary photographer who was charging by the Megapixel!

The shifty-looking video guy was a blackmailer and should have been strangled at birth. He threatened to use VHS tape instead of the DVD HD format if he wasn’t paid a large sum of money and well in advance!

Both the photographer and the video shifty were trying to “produce” the ceremony like a Teledrama!

Hair-Raising!

Then there was the cost of hair do’s, hair re-bonding, hair relaxing, hair removals, full face threading, hot wax, cold wax, just-right wax, bikini line, manicures, French manicures, nail art, pedicures, facials, transport, bridal dressing, bouquets (in the plural!), flowers, flower arrangements, invitation cards, thank you cards, wedding cakes, cake structures, catering and alcohol, not to mention the cost of hiring the Band whose repertoire was limited to one waltz and continuous Baila.

Then we realized that we had to buy the confetti as well!

On the appointed day I turned up early at the Intercontinental. I hired a car. I had half a mind to turn up in a three-wheeler to make a point but I didn’t want to embarrass the poor girl.

All this expenditure had shaken me. I felt stirred. I needed a drink. I headed straight for the bar and in my new disguise as James Bond, ordered a Vodka Martini shaken not stirred. (Actually, I prefer it stirred, not shaken, but I didn’t want to incur further expenses)

I just had time to grab my third Vodka M, when well-meaning relatives dragged me away from the bar. 

We were on starter’s orders! First there were the Kandyan Dancers, who now have a Trade Union of their own and were charging us by the dance step.

The drummers belonged to a different union and that caused a bit of discordance.

  Several Bank Managers in mufti were hanging around in the foyer offering more loans.

The Loan Sharks were walking up and down outside on the pavement.

A wedding in Las Vegas would have been cheaper, I thought.

Rs 7.5 million and counting!

As she stepped off the expensive car, with both the car and herself covered in expensive flowers, the Bride looked radiant; which was the only consolation as far as I was concerned.

In spite of the valiant efforts on the part of the make-up department, she was still recognizable.

She was lovely!  “How do I look, Uncle?” she looked up to me and asked me sweetly as she hugged me. I was about to say that she looked like a Million Dollar Baby but I corrected myself.

“At least 7.5 million Rupees Darling, and still counting!” I whispered in her ear.

 The Poruwa, largely constructed of plywood and polystyrene and which teetered alarmingly when I stepped on to it, was mortgaged to a Bank. The video guy called out “Cut! Cut!” a few times but I totally ignored him.

Everything went off smoothly, I must say. Then I got my bar bill. I did shed a tear then.

I wanted to tie a placard with the legend “Just Married, Courtesy of CeyLank & HNBC Banks” to the back of the expensive flower-festooned “getaway car”… (Or is it the “going away” car?)…but sober relatives intervened.

I untied my bow tie.

I was feeling stifled.

All that money for this? 

Copyright 2012 Gyan C A Fernando. Published in the Sunday Times of Sri Lanka on the 10th of June 2012

The illustrator N. Senthilkumaran's Blogspot maybe found here: http://studiosenthil.blogspot.com/