Cultural de rigueur is sometimes so mindless that it oversteps the borders of plain hilarity to plain craziness. My friend decided to go into relapse after having sworn off all social glitterati gatherings by attending a wedding of the unknowns i.e., you only know that your parents know them of course but you were clueless until the invite showed up with an insistent ‘with family’ in bold letters and loudly insistent invitors along with it.
She decided to tag along with the all-game-for-it party and had very important insights about many people in general- will they ever get a life? Having had to suffer from the guilt of pigging out on the buffet of the unknowns, to make her misery greater, she had to socialize with the relatives of the unknowns. Nosey MALE relatives who asked her with abominable impudence if she was single or hooked… 
it’s another thing that her pointed MYOB looks slid off the wall around their heads. In addition, the fact that they are leaning so close into your face that you can count the hair in their eyebrows is not helping.
Getting back to what the intention of this post was, my friend notices the that bride has been on the stage smiling prettily sitting on the imitation Victorian-georgian-elizebethan- whatchamacallit contraption of a chair all alone. The traditional ghagra is draped daintily all around her and her head is covered with a veil of exaggerated workmanship. Oh! & What do you turn around to see! The bride groom has arrived amidst a jolly rallying herd of relatives, the poor guy is lead by a trustworthy friend lest he might trip and fall over his lavish 9 yards Sehra. I shall attempt to describe what a sehra looks like, it’s a head gear made up entirely of jasmine flowers and from which extend long strings of jasmine flowers and roses or any other flowers of your liking. You might add to this sweet-smelling strangeness by stringing in party glitter- ribbons. The bridegroom then proceeds to sit beside the bride. To give it to them, maybe they are saving the girl from the scare of a lifetime?
This is what the Muslim weddings have come to, cultural manifestations of the ridiculous. Where the woman is in greater need of covering her modesty what in the world is the man doing by covering himself from head-to-toe with strings of flowers??? He grins at people by parting the curtain of flowers that is covering his face! It’s not a surprise that my friend came back with a sober – contemplative mind, how far can one go astray from the truth? The band flown-in from another state to play at the gathering helped only in increasing the intensity of this question. May Allah (SWT) always guide us to what is right and give us the courage to step away from the norm to do what is right.
