"Love is a flower which turns into fruit at marriage.”
-Finnish Proverb
Love, marriage, romance are integral parts of the human life. Physical, emotional, sexual and mental attractions are not eternal feelings within ourselves that even if we want, we cannot hold ourselves back from them. Material success, academic and professional achievements, career prospects and the biggest evil - money-making and the desire to become rich often leads us to ignore the many other non-materialistic aspects of our beautiful lives. Over time, generations have been changing and evolving. Personally, I believe that young adults almost twenty years ago seriously considered marriages and long-term commitments as extremely valuable and precious in their lives. Whereas in today's generation, millennials, including myself, "fear" commitment, and attachment. Marriages and finding love are no longer any one's priority but rather seem more like "trials" given the large pool of couples we have who are in relationships. They do appear committed but there is still an underlying context that they aren't "married" or "committed forever." Such changing perceptions have encouraged live-in relationships, and expanded the length of relationships, not marriages but instead “dating” and “we are together.” Such dynamic between changing trends and circumstances has led me thinking, pondering, and perhaps, over-thinking about my life as an almost-21-year-old, who could perhaps find the love of her life over the next couple years.
Weddings have been an "often-ignored-but-back-in-my-mind" component of my life. While I have only attended three weddings in my life so far, the most recent one, being my first cousin's the most influential. This has been both due to my age and the nature of Hindu festivities and traditions. When I was younger, I attended weddings of two of my uncles and I barely understood the meaning of ANY of the cultural rituals and ceremonies. To further clarify, Hindu weddings vastly define the extent to which family members play significant roles in any marriage. For example, as parents, you have the greatest role to play, and they largely vary whether you are the parents of the bride or of the groom; as a "real" aunt and uncle, you have other defined goals. It's crazy how the Hindu religion makes it customary for certain individuals to culturally contribute to the ceremonies in terms of increased responsibilities, and tasks while others tend to sit around and enjoy the music, dance, and the finger-lickin' spicy, masala, food.
As you click on the arrow below, I want you, my reader(s), to know why am I talking about weddings, love, romance and how the two most popular romantic gestures - flowers and jewelry- are significant in my life. What are some of the intricacies and the complacency of flowers and jewelry when they are looked at independently and/or jointly in conjunction with weddings? As basic as they seem, how can they be symbolically and meaningfully representative of romance, and love, and specifically in Hindu weddings?
