Think of Punjab and the gaiety of Punjabi weddings springs to mind at once. But the weddings have become so clichéd and expensive for the hosts that 30 villages in Mohali district have decided austerity is the way to go. They have resolved to make simplicity a virtue at what were once called the ‘Big Fat Punjabi’ weddings.
Trying to establish this new trend is the brainchild of an organisation of volunteers named Navi Soch Navi Palang (new thinking , new step) in 7 villages of the district. Having witnessed the ostentatious spending at social functions around weddings, the members have decided that enough is enough. They are going to propagate the bucking of the trend.
Ostentation used to be the norm in villages where people would indulge in all kinds of gimmickry, whether hiring luxury cars and limousines for the wedding or paying for the groom to arrive in a helicopter at the wedding venue. The presence of marriage halls on highways all over the countryside is testimony to fact that villagers in Punjab splurge on weddings. The villagers are known to take loans from private lenders and sometimes get trapped in a vicious debt cycle in conducting just one wedding in the family. To stop the old habits, the Navi Soch Navi Palang organisation is trying to persuade people to make marriages simple affairs.
The volunteers do not wish to be named in the media as they do not want this movement to be associated with the any political party. A founder member of the movement tells Asian Age that 30 villages in the district are part of the movement now.
“We encourage people to make weddings simpler. We have honored people who have married without taking dowry. Some of the villagers now only take 21 Baratis (members of the groom’s party) and perform the wedding at the local Gurudwara,” a member revealed.
Young people are finding the idea especially attractive. Recently, an NRI who belonged to one of the villages and had settled in Canada, was dissuaded from doing a social function on a large scale in the village. He was told off by the people that anyone who is not so well off should not go beyond their means and take loans just to show off at a wedding.
Navi Soch Navi Palang volunteers reveal that not only people spend unreasonably on weddings, but even during death the rituals have become needlessly elaborate and expensive. There is a new trend of people preparing elaborate meals during rituals and hiring waiters to serve food whenever people visit them during the mourning period. This trend is also being discouraged in these 30 villages and people are asked to serve simple dal, sabzi and roti at the local Gurudwara that are served by village volunteers. This beginning has reduced the expenditure during death rituals from around Rs 2 lakh to just Rs 25,000.
