Big Fat Indian Wedding

There is no end to the amount of wastage you can do in an Indian wedding.


Expensive clothes bought in bulk, most of which will not be worn more than 1 or 2 times in the person's life.

Jewelery, which, if real, will probably just sit in the locker most of the time, and is anyways worth less than 70% of the money you paid for it (the gold not being more than 18K pure, plus the making charges).

Elaborate reception menu, with sooooo many items per plate that a normal person cannot even taste, let alone eat them all! (In short, more wastage.)

Decorations... on the packing, on the venue, on the cash envelopes... all serving no particular purpose other than looking good in your wedding album.

And all this show off for people who care zilch for you (at least 90% of them)!


Maybe this mental perspective is one of the reasons why I'm not married yet. But I've always found it very difficult to spend my Dad's earnings on non-essentials. I mean the man spends all his life earning, and instead of taking a holiday with his wife on some exotic tropical island in the world, he saves it all for this meaningless expenditure in his daughters' weddings!

Totally stupid system, if you ask me! But Indians live for this!

At least they have done so till my generation. But, maybe things are changing now.

Maybe my generation, and the ones that follow, are becoming more interested in spending on themselves rather than saving for the weddings of their future kids.

Maybe that's why more and more young Indians have started thinking of marriage as a non-necessity in one's life.

Maybe it really is a non-necessity.

I don't know.

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Experiments

End of March, 2011

I did not take my prescribed daily dose of Montelukast Sodium (refer to my previous post "Modern Medicine: NOT God!") for 2 days.

Result: The pitting edema in my legs magically diminished by at least 60-70%! The asthma got severely aggravated though. So started taking the medicine again from the third day. But after that 2-day break, I was acutely aware of the pain in my legs, as the skin stretched to accommodate all that swelling from fluid retention. Terrible.


1st April, 2011

I reduced the dose of the above medicine to half.

Result: The swelling in legs reduced to about 40-50%. The asthma was manageable if I didn't expose myself to things I was allergic to.


1st July, 2011

Been 3 months on half dose of Montelukast Sodium. Visited Delhi twice during this period. Also visited Kanpur during my first trip to Delhi. Had to revert to the full dose for about 10 days during that trip, because of exposure to the extreme pollution levels in Kanpur.

Result: Apart from that one occasion, no major problems so far. Yes, the lungs have felt strained several times, whenever I have been careless enough to work in dust or over-exercise, but haven't had to take antibiotics yet on any of those times. Regular Reiki sessions would help more, but life is slightly hectic at the moment.

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