shaadi karo paise kamao!!!

Mockery.... yes that's what it is.

This is the first wedding i have experienced so up close and personal and it has been a one of its kind experience.
How we reduce an honest religious/social requirement into a completely blatant excuse to mock a thing like marriage.
I always believed marriage was about relationships, promises, party, fun but this experience has got me thinking in many ways, i never wanted to think.

How we have to deal with clashes in our value system especially in the Indian community. I enjoy the whole idea of an Indian wedding, the dressing up, the customs, the reunions, the organising and many other things, but at the same time I am gay and will NEVER be able to experience all this myself. How money starts to rule every action and becomes the criteria to judge an entire family. How people within the family can ruin an entire wedding just because he wants more attention. How we are slaves to this culture.

We always talk of improvement, growing up and changing for the better. But the things that i have seen and heard i the last 1 week only makes me feel we are walking backwards. On one side is this whole thing about upholding culture and sanding by centuries old tradition, which we so proudly and expertly have guarded for centuries affected by change only at a mega micro level, and on the other hand we are trying our best to to bring about change in ideology, in thinking and society
But where do we find the balance between these too. To change we have to break away. But to proudly guard we can't perhaps embrace change so easily.

In Tirupati, where millions of Pilgrims and the most orthodox of people visit mesmerised by the divine power, the lord is worshipped besides his two wives, yet another goddess who supposedly angered by the lords previous bigamous marital status has another temple away for herself out of vengeance is also worshipped. And yet we are so sceptical about bigamy and extramarital affairs. The Gods are at it dammit!!!
Isn't this proof enough of how we are struggling with our belief systems. Will we be able to embrace change so easily?
I am a trained amateur Indian classical dancer. I am taught to portray celestial and mythical love stories among gods and goddesses, but I am gay. Will i be able to portray gay references from the holy books? Will the audience accept it as ye another dance performance? Will the same old Mamis and mamas witness this performance?

We spend our lives trying to deal with things that are not going to benefit, improve and help us in any way, just because of the SOCIETY we live in. Won't this world be a much better place if we spent that energy in something more constructive, Personal development and the like?

Like I told A, one of the main reasons i left this place is to get away from all of this and just concentrate on ME and just be ME.

V day Vignettes

Red roses everywhere,

Gaudy flowers in a shape of a huge heart in our hotel lobby,

Love struck teenage school children hiding fron their parents meeting their crushes to exchange gifts,

Long queues at the florists,

Young couple (all dressed up) talking to another couple asking them to take the best taable at a restaurant,

Man in red shirt with red roses at the red traffic signal waiting for his lady love,

Young Indian couple, she probably wearing hih heels after a long time or for the first time, hair loose, Garden vareli saree, He just back from officem picked her up on his way, She clinging onto him, limping in her heels, He just happy,

Old Mallu couple, Nice starched off white saree, on their way, Romantic dinner?

Traffic jam apparently caused by valentines day,

A german farmer family in a Dubai bus in blazers and ties just out of the fancy Cruise at the port, bus full of labourers staring,

Valentines day cake at Cafe Qasr. Was finished when we reached.

Two well dressed young men, waiting for their dates ? or were each other's dates?

Lonely white man frissing on a lonely pizza.

'A' still confused. Doesn't know if he wants me or doesn't want me!!!!

B & S my sweetheart buddys.