October 6, 2008

The sorrows of duty, like the heat of the sun, have scorched your heart

By: AF Editors

Over the weekend, I attended a traditional south Indian wedding. It was quite a lovely ceremony, though undercut somewhat by it’s non-traditional location in Jacksonville — of which there might be even less “there” there than Oakland.

The ceremony was rather complex, at least compared with the Christian and Jewish weddings I’ve attended. It consisted of an elaborate series of rituals, my favorite of which definitely being the Kasi Yatra, where the groom-to-be attempts to seek the life of a wandering ascetic, before being waylaid by his future-father-in-law, who advises him on the superiority of married to ascetic life.

I felt this was a lovely, and uniquely Indian aspect of the wedding ceremony, and was compelled to wonder if past grooms, seized by an epiphany during this ritual, have decided on the wandering life instead — or if past fathers-in-law have decided to forego making the case for married life.

As a side-note, I was reminded that I’m only halfway through Paul Scott’s magisterial Raj Quartet. I really cannot recommend it highly enough. If you spend just a little time with its characters, with their rich interior lives and surrounded by epoch-making events, you’ll come to realize that all your friends are actually really boring.