36,000 shaadis and God alone knows how many barbaadis

Reports suggest that 36,000 weddings will take place on a single day in December in Delhi this year. Chew on it.
That means out of a population of 1.1 crore, 72,000 people will get married in Delhi on that day which entails 36,000 X 5 = 180,000 pre-and-post-wedding functions during that week (after all what's a shaadi in Dilli if it does not hasten your downfall towards bankruptcy!) And if an average of only 200 people attend each function (that's a rather small estimate), it will mean that 72 lakh people will be out on Delhi's streets on that day- which pretty much seems like a recipe for utter chaos and confusion. Commercially, even if each wedding costs only Rs 5 lakh, that would mean an expenditure of Rs 18 billion. Mind-boggling.
If you ask me though, the figure seems highly exaggerated and only a great figment of imagination of both journalists as well as that new breed of wedding planners who seem to be invading this city.
Newspapers report such stories with alarming regularity each year in the last week of November or early December. The intro to all such stories is the same, it inevitably starts with, "It's that time of the year again." Once they are through with explaining the wonderful alignment of stars which is the cause behind all those unions, they spin hyperbolic yarns of ghodis doing triple shifts, trotting from one wedding venue to another, of pandits being caught in traffic jams long after the mahurat is over, of the likes of Ambika Pillai making up 500 brides in an hour and other similar tales.
The number of weddings is suitably increased each year, in keeping with the media's penchant for exaggeration. When I started my career in 2003, one fine evening around 5 pm, I was told that the city would witness 14,000 weddings. When I asked some wedding planners, how they had arrived at that figure, they said it was an estimate arrived at by Chawri Bazaar traders since a majority of weddings cards are printed at this Chandni Chowk paper market. The bazaar traders, however, offer no such figures. Next year, someone decided to increase the figure to 17,000. The year later, they came up with two dates, on both of which 15,000-odd weddings were apparently held in the city.
This year, of course, will see the mother of all shubh mahurats with 36,000 weddings. But really, is that even possible? Does the city actually have so many people of marriagable age? And if so many people are getting married on that day, why are all my friends single?
Oh and for the record, I haven't got a single invite to a wedding on this mother-of-all-auspicious days...

Hernia's Hot But Periods Are Not

I have been meaning to write this for a while, but have been busy with other things. I suppose in some ways SR, it supplements your post on feminism. While most males (to the best of my knowledge) are rather uncomfortable with such issues, I would love to know what they think about it. So if anyone of you reads it, do send your feedback.
Good girls don't talk about their menstrual periods or the extreme pain quite often associated with it, and specially not in male company. Growing up, it's something you are always taught to hide. So much so, that nobody, not even schools, where adolescents spend most of their time, ever bother to ease the discomfort that puberty brings along for girls.
And so, even as girls start their chums at an increasingly younger age (9-10 is becoming the norm in metros like Delhi), many sadistic schools continue to persist with snow-white uniforms all through the year. It doesn't matter if you are bothered more about staining your skirt than about your classes during those four-five days, no one cares-after all, boys don't chum, do they?
The male reproductive system, on the other hand, is considered good material for polite dinner-table conversation. Men don't think twice about unburdening their prostate and hernia woes even when complete strangers are around (and I am not blaming the world at large, I have seen men in my own family do it), but when they have to refer to female reproductive ailments, an absolute hush descends on them.
All diseases exclusive to women are euphemistically referred to as "female diseases". When a woman has fibroids in her uterus or she suffers heavy bleeding, poor soul she has a female disease. When she suffers a miscarriage or undergoes an abortion, many just say,"Usko gadbad ho gaya hai," instead of referring to the condition.
Sanitary napkin ads are not to be viewed when elders or kids are around (even though they have come a long way from days of yore when Renuka Shahane of Surabhi fame used to embarrassedly tell us mujhe aapse kuch kehna hai, kaise kahoon?) It's not porn, is it? And it's not even as if either my grandfather or I are unaware of this process, but no, neither of us is comfortable watching it in the other's presence. I suppose it is a result of centuries of internalising certain ideas not something that will go away in a day.
Nothing, however, can explain why many families, even today, insist on keeping women out of religious areas and ceremonies and in extreme cases, even out of the kitchen when they are menstruating. So you don't want the entire world to know you are chumming, but when everyone's visiting the Durga Puja pandal, your mother will subtly signal you to stay back. Does anyone get anything out of this except embarrassing the poor girl/woman to death? I suppose in earlier days, women were considered "impure" while menstruating and hence, kept out of religious areas. But really, will God punish me just because I dare to worship Him (or is it Her?) while my body performs a perfectly normal function?

Long Road to Paradise

Srinagar saw its first snowfall yesterday and a picture of people walking in the snow against the backdrop of the picturesque Zamran mountains has been carried on the front pages of both TOI and HT today. Looking at the pictures early morning transported me back to that Christmas Eve when I was finally able to visit Srinagar after almost 15 years.
I may have made bitching about my job my part-time profession, but there are some things I would never have been able to do without it - and visiting Srinagar was definitely my most memorable experience as a reporter (even though I never filed a story after the trip).
Four of us set out on a rather ill-organised trip arranged by the J&K government to the city of my origin on Christmas Eve. The Delhi sky was thick with fog that day and the flight was delayed by almost four hours. I was anxious- except for a brief two-day trip that my parents undertook in 1999, without telling any of us, no one from my family had dared go back to Srinagar since 1989.
The flight finally took off in the afternoon and we reached Srinagar in the evening. Getting down on the tarmac itself gave me an absolutely electric feeling. Now all I wanted was it to snow. Soon we were on our way to Sonmarg, which is a level below Gulmarg. As we moved through the city, I tried hard to recall memories from what seemed another era, when we would all come down to Srinagar for our summer vacation and spend a month there. Staring at those half-burnt houses, I wondered which one of them had once belonged to us.
But fifteen years is a long time. Was this the road which led to my house? Was this the lane which we used to go down to take those matadors? Is this the route which we took to the Mughal Gardens? Unfortuantely, there was no one to answer my queries. How I wished dad had come along!
At Sonmarg, my wish finally came true. As we got down to change vehicles to begin the long climb up the winding road to Gulmarg, it started snowing. I promptly put on my gloves and jumped into the snow like a little girl, much to the embarrassment of the others. Despite wearing several layers of clothing and a six-feet long overcoat, I was completely frozen. As it was getting dark, my snow-adventure had to be cut short.
Halfway through the climb, our vehicle almost skidded into the ravine. We stopped and tried to get out of the car. Unfortunately, sports shoes are no good in such weather. We kept falling and slipping on the snow. Finally, we made our way away from the edge of the road. The driver struggled with the vehicle for a along time before declaring that we could go no further. He had forgotten to put chains around the tyres and without the chains, we would slip into the ravine within seconds.
Stranded on that mountain road, halfway between Sonmarg and Gulmarg, a thought occurred to me. May be I was destined to die in Kashmir. Gulmarg was still a couple of kilometres away and it had taken us 10 minutes to just cover the width of the road. Our driver left us there with all our luggage and went off. Using all my rudimentary Kashmiri skills, I tried to get somebody to take us up to Gulmarg. But all these years of terrorism have made Kashmiris a suspicious lot. Everybody refused. The four of us tried to walk but in a situation where one just doesn't know where the ground beneath all that snow is, we made slow progress. Without any cellphones and with everybody around looking at us supcisiously, we just didn't know what to do, except drag our suitases and ourselves in the snow.
Suddenly, a car with an official who had earlier refused to help us and gone down the road to Sonmarg about 15 minutes back, returned and offered to take us to Gulmarg. I was, afterall, not going to die on Christmas Eve.
Gulmarg seemed straight out of a pictrure postcard. There was just snow, snow and more snow. And even though from a distance it's an awesome sight, trying to walk in it, is absolutely not. We trudged up to our hotel on a hilltop and quickly changed for the official dinner. We inched our way down to the ski slopes where the skiiers were ready for take-off. Each one with a flaming torch in his hand, whizzed past us, down the slope and into the dark Gulmarg night. Looking at those tiny dots of light in the vast emptiness of the snow-clad expanse seemed just surreal.
Soon, it was tiem to head back to our hotel where I requested the waiter to get me some Kahwa and sheermal (sweet kashmiri bread). Sitting back in my room, enjoying the combined warmth of the coal bukharis and the electric blankets, I stared at the pine trees outside. No cellphones. No landlines either with the entire region being cut off due to some fault. No TV. Just snow all around and some wonderfully hot kahwa and sheermal in my hands. So what if I almost died on my way up there, I truly did experience paradise on earth that day.