…is Abhi? Not our Abhi of course, but the other Abhi, the one who vedded TMBWITW on Friday, as millions of far-less-fortunate people cursed his luck for snagging such a delicious piece of barfi [Thanks, Sushma :)] . Since you mutineers just loooove engaging in conjecture regarding what’s actually going on in random paintings in Indian restaurants, I thought you might also yenjoy deciding what on earth Big B’s little B was thinking at this moment.
While you do that, I’m going to try and give the outstanding, fifth DC SMeetup the sort of write-up it deserves. And after I do THAT I’m going to tell you why 80% of the people who read Perez Hilton deserve to be sterilized, lest they reproduce more racist idiots…
Al beruni :
Totally agree with you. Add to it 51 lakhs donation to temples, flying in private jets to Tirupathi, getting married to a tree (did this really happen ??)
Abhishek: “Say it one more time sugar” Aishwarya: “Sigh, for the millionth time, you are way bigger than Salman Khan”.
Best.Comment.EVER.
I’m cracking up!
Abhi: ” Ohhhh Aishwaryaaaaa/ I’m gonna marry ya / ‘Cos I like ya/ We’ll buy furniture from… Ikea/ Go on holiday to… Korea/ And drink.. sangria”. Aish: “Honey bun, I know you’re granddad was a poet and all, but that stopped being cute around the 24th verse. Now shut up and let me watch my stories.” Abhi: “Yes, dear.”
Due to a one-eyed mahout and his problems with depth perception, Aishwarya embarrassingly approaches the wedding canopy perching atop the world’s smallest elephant.
During her Oprah interview Aish said Indian women incorporate yoga-asanas with sex. How true is that – and maybe that’s what he’s thinking about? Doesn’t everybody combine yogasanas with sex? Especially after the fifth vodka. It is absolut-ly true.
Taj UK, these are great. Loved your captions for the previous photo. Keep ’em comin’, y’all.
Why do people want them to look all happy and smiles? It would look strange at an Indian wedding. Though when I was a young kid I did wonder why my dad looked so serious and my mom looked so dazed in their wedding pics…later I came to understand it’s part of the culture and tied in to the significance of what marriage means to all concerned. The key difference here is that this is a LOVE marriage, so I guess one could argue that there’s no reason to continue the pretense of being so upset (because in a traditional arranged marriage the bride really was leaving her parents and moving in to a new home with complete strangers…which is not the case with Aishwarya). I am surprised that this particular couple is continuing this ‘tradition’. Probably they’re doing it because they would get a lot of criticism from the Indian public if Aish was giggling and smiling the whole time. Anyway, as others have mentioned, they’ve continued every other major and minor tradition possible anyway, so why not this.
I know, I know, the ‘love marriage’ aspect of this is debatable. But it’s certainly not an arranged marriage in the traditional sense.
I agree with some of the comments on here – they almost seem like they are being forced to go through all this. And what’s up with shitty beard..Yuck.
Actually, yes. The protocol during trad indian weddings in India is to carry oneself in an extremely demure way — no smiling.
At all of the small town and village weddings I attended the bride and groom never touched, smiled at each other or danced with each other. It’s just not protocol (lajja bhushana stri). The exceptions I’ve seen to this are “modern style” metro weddings.
Support from “one’s guy” who the bride is “supposed to be in love with” just does not factor in — or at least the outward show of such support and lovey dovey feelings does not factor in.
Of course, being that these two are modern, famous, glamourous Bollywood stars, one would expect smiles and lovey dovey behaviour.
But seeing that pic above just reminded me of the many, many Indian weddings I’ve attended as well as the many photos of Indian weddings I have seen.
Even pictures of couples from India who have been married for years show the couple very stand-offish from one another — no arms around each other, no smiles, no hand-holding and no connectedness.
Grandparents pics anyone?
Adding to #96, it is a weird coincidence, but that star wedding had some similarities with this one.
Jilted/angry/deranged fan creating a scene, in this case, by calling a political party’s office and telling them that the star was harboring terrorists who are planning on setting off a series of bombs.
Leaked private pictures!
But the similarities end there. The press was invited to the wedding reception and the two have been ‘together’ for 5 years now and it is the first relationship for both of them! Surya’s father, a yesteryear leading man himself was apparently opposed to the romance till a few months ago.
Interesting point, Amardeep. One of the reasons the marriage is not quite as ostentatious, over-the-top and hyper-expensive as one might expect is, I think, in part due to the progressive values that the Bachchans subscribe to, and also in part due to their concern about what ostentation may convey.
This goes back to the values of many of the progressive, Independence-era Indians, including Nehru and Gandhi, who did not fail to notice that a child’s wedding in India would be so expensive that it would often wipe out the savings of many a poor farmer or rural worker. From Kipling’s Kim :
‘Thy cousin’s younger brother owes my father’s cousin something yet on his daughter’s marriage-feast,’ said the woman crisply. ‘Let him put their food to that account. The yogi will beg, I doubt not.’
I know you can argue for it as an “investment”, but the bottomline is that it ain’t. This was a serious social problem that the nationalists called to attention several times in their writings and not the least, by organizing their own children’s wedding simply. I am pretty sure it was something that did not fail to come to the attention of Harivansh Rai Bachchan. It is just Enlightenment values all over again.
Amitabh raises an interesting point. I think that this tradition has counterparts in other cultures, as for instance, the tradition of “the demure bride“. I think Aishwarya quite adequately conveyed it.
aishwarya looks lovely (except for the throne behind them which detracts from the couple) and even better in the tirupati pictures. there was a photo of her father arriving for the wedding, and he was dressed very simply in a plain cream kurta. unless he changed into something more elaborate, he was very unostentatious. there was a cnn-ibn or some other article describing the various rituals that would be involved in the ceremony, and all of the mentions were of the bachchans’ family customs – from both amitabh and jaya’s (i think that elaborate necklace above is a contribution from jaya bachchan) sides. however, there was no mention of any of aishwarya’s family’s bunt customs, either due to the myopia/ignorance of the journalist or because they were just speculating. i can’t believe her family would allow their customs to be completely sidelined or that the bachchans would do that. given her look above and at tirupati, it looks like the journalist was wrong.
As Amitabh pointed out, it’s part of the tradition to look like that during Indian weddings. It ties into the cultural values of what marriage means — duty, sobriety, kula-dharma, etc.
It may look very strange to us “westerners”, but if one reads some history of Indian culture(s) and the concept of ghrista-ashram as dharma, the roles of wife and husband in relation to each other as well as in relation to one’s parents and in-laws, well, then one can glean an insight into why most “traditonal” Indian wedding photos contain almost no smiles and no touching, things that are expected at “western” weddings.
I recently saw a wedding photo from the 1950’s wherein a friend of mine’s grandmother (anglo-American) is standing with her husband and about 15 of his multi-generational relatives in South India. She was the only one beaming with a big, bright smile. It looked charming but out of place in a sea of stoic, serious faces.
Often times, even now, family photos from India often lack in beaming smiles. It’s not because the people are unfamiliar with the technology of photography (an old argument), it’s just because it’s the way it is.
How many photos of married Indian couples (in India) have you seen where the couple are actually arm-in-arm and smiling?
Yes, if we visit Bombay or New Delhi once every 2 to 3 years, we are sure to see several couples showing public displays of affection here and there. But the rest of India just does not do that, generally speaking. Wedding and family photos reflect this aspect of Indian culture on celluloid.
It gives the appearance to outsiders that India is a country lacking in good ol’ fashioned lovin. Not neccessarily the case. However, there is a protocol that is to be followed in front of the public and even in front of close family members, especially elders.
The problem starts when such appearantly cold behaviour seeps into private quarters. The result is frustration, represssion, dis-satisfaction.
I was reading an Ayurvedic book recently by the famous Harish Johari. He writes therein that there is an energy field that extends about an arm’s length out from each individual and that we should try to keep an arm’s length distance from other people, so as to preserve our energy field and allow for greater focus in our lives.
Unfortunately he advises parents to keep this distance between themselves in the household, in front of their children. He says that children are very impressionable and how the parent’s act with each other affects the mental impressions a child will carry with them into adulthood. True. But unfortunately he got it backwards — for a child to see no physical affection between her/his parents will yield a negative result, not the other way around. I sat the book down for a moment and reflected upon how many people might actually be influenced by his words and take up his advice and stay an arm’s length away from their spouse during the day in front of the kids. For some Indian people reading this it might make sense to them and reconfirm what they saw (or didn’t see) in their house growing up — a lack of physical affection between parents. Non-Indians into the yogic/ayurvedic lifestyle might be mislead into thinking that his view on physical affection has some sort of “mystical” or “ancient” scientific basis, and seek to implement in their life, despite not having grown up in such a fashion and feeling in the core of one’s self it is not really psychologically healthy. I see such an adoption of negative aspects of cultures being adopted all the time by westerners getting into this or that philosophy from other regions of the world. After some time, when they see certain customs and habits don’t work, they drop them, but that usually takes years and the damage has already been undone – to them and those around them.
I also noted how Johari did not mention that a woman should also keep her children at arm’s length, or a baby in need of mother’s milk. It always struck me how the warnings of physical closeness were meted out to male-female couples rather than parents/children, especially mothers and children. If it’s true that our energy field requires an arm’s length distance then why only between a couple?
It’s these small details — the things that are not said, rather than the things that are said — which give an indication of the mentality of a people, or of a culture. Bascially I came away from that section of the book knowing that here is a man, a “doctor” of ayurveda, a yogic practicioner, who is not at all comfy with the idea of the basic (adult) human need of touch and physical affection. And he is writing a book on health and well-being!
And it’s these ideas that have influenced generations of Indians, not only Indians but people around the world from all different backgrounds as well, who are taking an interest in Indian holistic healing and ways of life. The 95% good advice is almost poisoned by the 5% bukwus which inevitably pops up at some point when you read books like this. And some people are not able to distinguish the good from the bad — they buy into the whole package — especially when they are looking to add some “culture” to their lives, which alot of the “new age” and “yoga” people of the west are looking for, what to speak of westerners who actually belong to a religious group that might agree with such ideas.
How many photos of married Indian couples (in India) have you seen where the couple are actually arm-in-arm and smiling?
I think smiling for those highly posed wedding pictures was actively discouraged by the photographers too. My parents and in-laws look wonderful, but very grim, in all their wedding photographs. Weddings (esp. in South India) were considered very solemn occassions back in the day, and grinning in the photos would have been inappropriate.
PG, to be perfectly honest, your comment (#115) looks purely speculative to me.
My parents have never heard of this ayurvedic field theory, which imho is just a big load of bull, and nor have any of my relatives. What has this got to do with whether they hold hands in public or not? Absolutely nothing.
The theory sounds like BS to me too, in relation to a couple. However, I do like to keep a certain amount of space around me during my interaction with most people – a comfort zone – and when that zone is crossed, I do feel weird.
My point was not that every Indian would have read Johari’s statement regarding this field, but that Indians in India are very much influenced by the overall ethos of the cultural environment there which is still to a large extent based on ideas similar to the ones written about above. What Johari did was take his religious/cultural/whatever repressed ideas regarding physical display of affection between a man and woman and try to gloss it over with some yogic/ayurvedic/mystical sounding theory so as to disguise his social conditioning and psychological issues in order to make it sound appealing to the worldwide masses when all it is is just the words of a non-romantic man who probably needs to walk up to his wife in the middle of a function and plant a big kiss on her face and let the world know how much he needs her. That would do more for him, her, you and me then some pseudo-scientific theory on why a husband and wife should not hold hands in front of their kids. And westerners fall for this crap. Ridiculous.
That being said, the rest of his book was pretty good, as well as some of his other works on yoga, meditation, tantra, etc.
Thanx for saying that. I’ve gotten a lot of heat recently from some close friends calling me a sell out for choosing to go thru traditional rites and horoscope matching and all the things I would consider BS otherwise as well and it hurts. And since when are weddings about the couple especially in the Indian context? Actually my Italian and Chinese friends told me they would have opted to elope and do without the pomp but it was for the parents. If Ash married a tree to make the inlaws happy so she could be happy so be it. What is the big deal? Honestly it has made both sets of my parents so happy and only makes my life easier so I don’t see anything wrong in it. And if it makes me a hypocrite so be it. That many less people to invite to a wedding hehehe.
Honestly it has made both sets of my parents so happy and only makes my life easier so I don’t see anything wrong in it.
Ditto for me. Before my overly-traditional wedding, I was complaining about practically every ridiculous ritual I had to go through, and then it hit me. The wedding is really for the family, the marriage is for you. So shrug it off, enjoy it and live happily ever after. Or something like that.
Astrological compatibility is not BS. There is actually some sort of science behind it (based on astronomy), especially if you have a well-seasoned astrologer who has a strong basis in astronomy.
It basically checking the influences the planets and other heavenly bodies have on the disposition (nature, mood, character, personality) of an individual and how that disposition can positively or negatively affect their spouse.
Most of my friends had it done before or after marriage and I can say that what their charts show, shows up in “real life” as well, regarding their relationships.
More regarding Johari’s and other Indian holistic healers writings; such advice does a great deal of harm to people like me who have grown up seeing healthy displays of affection between their parents, such as hand-holding, hugging, goodbye kisses before going to work, etc. I learned from my parents how to show love and appreciation for my mate. And I learned how a man should treat a woman (treat me) and how a woman reciprocates that good treatment with appreciation and love. To tell people like me who have grown up in such a healthy environment that I should degress, regress back into a time period or culture where such a healthy level of exchange did not exist (due to whatever reasons), is simply assanine beyond all belief. And yes, there are people who have grown up in a healthy, loving environment who will STILL try to implement such advice, going against their own conscious, because some “mystic yogi” or whatever said it, and they think it’s “spiritual”.
Of course it’s a matter for Abhishek and Aishwarya to decide – the rituals, pleasing the family, the ten tons of gold, tree-weddings, temple-offerings, what have you. And as the adoring public that gives them (particularly AB senior) their roti-rozi and celebrity status, we have a right to think the worse of them for it. I don’t know who is to blame for the over the top superstition and ritualism but it doesn’t inspire respect.
Here’s a different take on marriage…
M. Nam
Scam and Sham, eh? Brilliant, MoorNam! 🙂
Astrological compatibility is not BS. There is actually some sort of science behind it (based on astronomy), especially if you have a well-seasoned astrologer who has a strong basis in astronomy. PG has, no doubt, given this a great deal of thought.
Honestly for me I’m actually enjoying it. I never thought I would but I am and I’m almost a little guilty for it. All the little rituals that I never in a million years thought I’d be part of are really endearing to me.
As is the science behind being an adult and understanding your shortcomings and compatibilities and making logical decisions for yourself. Our astrological report told me nothing more about him, me and both of our relationship that I didn’t already know.
I beg to differ. These people don’t owe you anything just because you pay $10 to see their movies. There is such a thing as a personal life and every single person is entitled to it no matter how public a figure. I think it’s disgusting how people are saying all this nonsense about them when they really did go out of their way to keep things private and out of the public eye. It’s one thing to want to look out of curiousity because it’s a lovely thing and they are both celebrities and she’s beautiful but then to say mean spirited stuff and make it personal is unacceptable.
What’s mean-spirited and invasive-of-privacy about judging people who are very much in the public eye (and who ironically bank on an elite and Westernised image, like AB advertising luxury goods) for their rather retrograde behaviour? Why did they go to Tirupati with politicians and industrialists around them and make a big show of giving 51 lakhs to the temple, was that not a public act that was meant to be noticed? I didn’t say they didn’t have every right to do it or a right to their personal life, did I? I only said we have a right to judge them for it. Why the touchiness about judging people in this respect when we wouldn’t hesistate to judge someone for, say, racist jokes and attitudes, even if they have a right to say those things?
You are implying that being a public personality in the entertainment industry is mutually exclusive to being religious. That too for Indians???
JOAT, congratulations! Did you ever mention on here before that you’re getting married? All the best! Very happy for you.
JOAT, congratulations!
Congratulations too, JOAT
PG..are you Pardesi Gori from days of yore?
PG is Pardesi Gori indeed…but at least on this thread she’s added something of value, and has toned down her usual offensive rhetoric. PG, when you explain things WITHOUT seeming like you’re putting down our culture or without implying that you personally are SO oppressed by Indian mores, etc., then it makes for much better reading. For once I get the feeling that you’re simply describing certain things WITHOUT making a value judgement about them (but it’s also true that I didn’t go through your whole long post (#115) so possibly there’s offensive stuff in there that I don’t know about).
Oops thanx, not really the place to announce wedding plans especially while they are still in the works 🙂
The alternative to the way they look in all the photos is not necessarily giggles and smiles. Just something. Some emotion. A sideways glance. A head tilted toward the other person. A whispered word. But there’s NOTHING. It’s weird. This is not a traditional arranged marriage, these people know each other and have worked together.
Is it possible that the pictures leaked to the press have caught them at bad or somber moments but the whole thing really wasn’t like this? If you look at some of the other more ‘natural’ pictures they look happy like this picture where he’s doing a namaskar and she’s smiling or this one from her mehndi. Anyway I remember recently at my friend Arun’s wedding I had to literally beg him and scream at him every step of the way to smile. He was so stressed out and exhausted on his wedding day, a lot of his pictures have him looking really serious.
MoorNam, I’ve read a few of your writings before and I liked them. Funny how you come across to some on here as an ultra-conservative saffronist. You don’t strike me as that at all. Rather you strike me as someone who wants to preserve the beneficial and progressive aspects of traditional Indian culture, giving them a modern twist, while completely doing away with the negative and stifling aspects. This is a process which, as a non-Indian practicioner of an “Indian religious system”, I have to constantly engage in with my fellow non-desi as well as desi sisters and brothers in the same religious system. This is a topic we frequently discuss and analyze — what aspects of Indian culture truly reflect the spiritual practices we are meant to engage in for spiritual advancement, and what aspects are just a part of Indian culture that have no bearing on spirituality.
I realize I may have sounded like a quack with my defense of astrology. Spiritually speaking, astrology is not good to indulge in. On a material level though I have to say that I was shocked by the stuff an Indian astrologer told me about my life in which there was no way he could have known. He said the placements of the stars, planets and other constellations in my chart indicated that these things may have been a possibility in my earilier life — and they indeed were.
Everything that I was told by astrologers based on my kundli has come to pass, or passed before they told me. Therefore I am open to the idea that there is indeed something to thing called “vedic astrology”. Basically it’s how the forms of nature (heavenly bodies) effect other forms of nature (human bodies and minds). And we already know that science is telling us we are all connected — right?
MoorNam writes in his article;
I’ve experienced this first hand while trying to carry on with an adult relationship while living in India. Mind you, I was post 30 years of age and sneaking around like a shame-filled pre-teen. Imagine what this did to my psyche. And people wonder why I come off as immature???
NO! I don’t agree with the above statement in bold. It is not the type of marriage that ends in divorce, it is the circumstances around it. Most people over the age of 75 years in USA are not divorced. Yet they had sham (love) marriages in which they courted, dated, sometimes even had sex before marriage. There generation looked down on divorce. Moreover, women of their generation were alot more financially and socially dependent on their husbands than subsequent generations. These are the factors that contribute to the long lasting marriages of that generation — NOT having their parents choose their mate for them.
Similarly, in India, where most people are not easily allowed to marry the person of their choice, naturally they would not be allowed (society wise) to easily divorce either. Love marriages in India take place between people who have already crossed one barrier in self-determination (choosing one’s own mate despite obstacles from family, culture, society, etc), therefore that makes it easier to cross the next barrier (divorce), if indeed the situation comes to that.
And again, just because a society has very little divorce does not mean that it’s a society full of healthy, happy and functioning marriages.
PG,
Thanks. I will be replying to your post on the comments section of the blog that I linked to earlier. I request you to move this debate over there.
M. Nam
I do think it’s a little strange how so much analysis has been poured into these photographs. It’s like we’ve stumbled onto a new science of interpreting celebrity meaning: fameotics or fameology. Let’s be grateful that there’s no leaked wedding video or we’d be here for years (depending on tenure, of course).
Geez, didn’t realize we had so many Dr. Phil’s on Sepia Mutiny. Making judgements on two people’s relationship and whether or not they love each other simply by looking at a couple leaked pictures? You guys should get in touch with Oprah – I’m sure she’d love to share your magical skills with the world.
I’m sure if someone saw a couple of my wedding pictures they would think I was miserable. But there’s plenty of others (post-wedding ceremony) where I can’t wipe the smile off my face.
In other words, get a life (or a significant other of your own).
Sometimes ‘get a life’ is all you can come up with after reading such immature comments.
I’ll try to be less snobby next time .. but no promises =)
Sonia – the only one being judgmental and immature here is you. You have no clue about the personal lives of the people making comments on these photos, yet don’t hesitate to offer snide personal advice. Newsflash: this is a post about a high-profile relationship. People are naturally going to discuss what they can see of the relationship. What are we supposed to do according to your oh-so-mature-and-wise self? Say ‘Congrats’ and sign off?
I’m so sorry, from now on I’ll try to only post non-judgmental and mature comments like this:
Making judgements on two people’s relationship and whether or not they love each other simply by looking at a couple leaked pictures
I thought most of the derision here was rightly directed at their ridiculous accoutrements, and not so much at the nature of their relationship. Heh.
This isn’t about playing favorites or certain people having memberships, it’s about sustaining a good conversation. And it wasn’t just one of your comments which was deleted, so that proves it wasn’t about censoring that one thought you cited. No one wants to silence you. Please, dive right back in.
You see I am having a tough time with the “sustaining conversation” theory because Sonia has put down other people on more then one post and none of her comment’s got touched and I dont want them to, but it just make’s me wonder why?
Sonia said:
You say that it is about coversation, well then who is she conversating with? Not me. Because the comment she is addressing got deleted, so she isnt conversating with anyone.
I hope you see why I brought that up because I am seeing some people get comment’s deleted and other’s not so much. If this is a blog aimed at certain friend’s then I apologize for intruding.
Correction. This statment should have been in quotes
Arey Baba!!!
They are not smiling in the official wedding pics (pics of them sitting in the actual nuptual mandap, sitting on throne, etc) because it is just not done during weddings in India. There is nothing more than that. Whether or not they are in love, happy with each other or not, etc, cannot be gleaned via wedding photos where, in either case, the expressions on the faces would be solemn and sober anyway, in keeping with tradition.
Only they themselves know if they are happy or not.
No need for that last bit. From any of you, please. It’s lame and not true.
Look, you’re seeing things which aren’t there, with all due respect. No one is out to get you. If anyone said something as disturbing as “If I had to be with her I would be forced to talk about nothing, but death and abortions…”, I’d delete their comment, even if it was my Mother who left it. Other mutineers might have let it slide because we don’t all think the same way, so there are bound to be vagaries
Buddy, there is a thing called context and if you just take random quote’s from people and pharase them out of context then that’s on you.
Oops thanx, not really the place to announce wedding plans especially while they are still in the works 🙂 That’s awesome. Congratulations!