Photo Essay: A Queer Dance

Something went wrong at a wedding in Mahipalpur.

[By Mayank Austen Soofi]

Somebody was getting married in Mahipalpur, an urban village near Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport. The excitement had burst out into the afternoon alley. The white mare which would take the groom to the bride's house was tied to an electric pole. The players of the music band, all set to blow trumpets, drums and saxophones, were having their last-moment-rest under the shade of a tree. The groom, however, could not be seen.

His friends had taken over a stretch of the street. They were dancing, with no women, in front of a motor van in which a stereo was playing Bollywood hits at full blast. Some were jubilantly lifted up by others into the air. A silver-haired man, possibly drunk, swayed with the music and bent his body back till the head reached the ground. He was the father of the groom.

The people of the street – the paan walla, the fruit walla, the shop walla – had gathered around the van. Neighborhood women, heads covered, watched from balconies. School children, on the way home, stopped to gawk with open mouths. A mad beggar went on laughing.

From this crowd emerged a boy in a yellow tee shirt. He climbed up the van. There he spread his arms, slithered his body, and began to make pelvic thrusts. All the while he lip-synced the song with passionate facial expressions. Soon another boy joined him. Facing each other, they stood far apart, held hands, jerked their heads, then pulled each other and embraced. Suddenly the stereo went off. The boys stepped down.

The music started after a minute. Dancing renewed. But something had snapped. The mood was missing. The ladies went back to their kitchens. The hungry children ran home. The stalls owners returned to their little businesses. Only the laughing beggar stayed back. The moment was lost. The boys had separated.

Where's the Groom - We are Ready

Where's the Groom - I'm Ready

Where's the Groom - We Don't Care

Give Me Your Arm Please

My Best Friend's Wedding

St. Valentine's Special - Love and Trial in New Delhi

A couple struggles to carry on amidst parental disapproval and caste differences.

[This report is based on a series of conversations Mayank Austen Soofi had with Ms. Renu Rani Tyagi. The picture is not related to Ms. Tyagi.]

Ms. Renu Rani Tyagi wants to marry Mr. Vipin Kothiyal but their parents object. She is 5 feet, one inch tall. He is 11 inches taller, and thinner. They live in small town Modinagar and commute daily to Delhi, 35 miles away. She works in a media firm at Greater Kailash-I. His software office, in Okhla Industrial Estate, comes ten minutes after her bus stop. During work, they stay connected through Yahoo Messenger. (Her screen name is Jaanu; his is Vipin).

They first met, ten years ago, while learning Java language in a neighborhood computer training center. The intimacy started much later - during long bus rides to and from work. He liked her "childishness" and she was attracted towards his "quiet nature". They exchange around 500 phone messages each month.

Since Modinagar is a place where even strangers act as a nosy neighbor, they prefer sharing their time, whatever little could be spared, in the relative anonymity of Delhi. Sometimes they go to the Lotus Temple at Nehru Place, while other evenings are reserved for strolls in Connaught Place. When hungry, Ms. Tyagi likes to have pizzas at the Champagne restaurant, near Delhi Gate. She insists on paying for her own expenses. But they never go to Lodhi Gardens or Ambedkar Park, areas infamous for lovers seeking physical closeness in provocative poses. Mr. Kothiyal feels strongly about anyone doubting his beloved's reputation.

But circumstances are not ideal. Though they are upper-caste Brahmins, Ms. Tyagi's sub-caste is Kaushik while his is Bhardwaj. This has not appealed to Ms. Tyagi's parents. Their five older daughters are married to Kaushiks and they are not keen to get their last child married outside the sub-caste. Additionally, Mr. Kothiyal hails from the Garhwal region of Himalayas. Unlike Ms. Tyagi, his family has no substantial ancestral land. This is a source of anxiety to Ms. Tyagi's clan.

But these disadvantages have not deterred her parents from being charmed by the well-mannered suitor wanting to be their son-in-law. Last year, Mr. Kothiyal had arranged a cab for Mr. Tyagi, a heart patient, when he had to return home from a hospital stay in Delhi. Both the father and mother were touched. They desire a boy like him – but he has to be a Kaushik.

More difficulties lie ahead. Mr. Kothiyal's parents are severely unhappy with their son's choice of life companion. Recently, tensions within the family prompted the besotted son to leave the house. He returned a month later, only after being repeatedly urged by Ms. Tyagi. She believes parents are never to be betrayed.

What if their families never reconcile to the match?

"In that case, I will not marry him." Ms. Tyagi said determinedly. "But then I shall not marry anyone else."

Photo Essay: Highway Weddings in New Delhi

Rush hour commuters in the capital cope with street weddings - along with everything else.

[By Mayank Austen Soofi]

They emerged from the five-star Ambassador Hotel a few hours after sunset. The handsome groom, turbaned and dressed in a cream-colored sherwani, climbed onto a white mare. Like a warrior-prince of yesteryear, he would ride to claim his bride: along with an entourage of uncles, aunts, cousins and well-wishers.

A band of professional musicians led the baraat - the wedding procession. Starched uniforms clung unnaturally to their slender bodies. Their sunken cheeks blew air into saxophones to produce ear-splitting Bollywood chartbusters. The entire party was surrounded by miserably-clothed laborers carrying stylish lamps on their thin shoulders. These lamps were powered by a noisy generator dragged by an exhausted man at the tail-end of the procession.

Hijacking busy Subramaniam Bharti Marg Avenue, the baraat trotted on unapologetically at a snail's pace - allowing ample time for the happy throng to dance, jump, laugh, shout, click pictures and show off jewels. The enthusiastic groom responded warmly to the cheers and blessings. Late evening traffic whizzed past dangerously but was unnoticed by the revelers. Everyone waxed merry - except the mare, the musicians, and the lamp-carriers.

These celebratory scenes bore close resemblance to the climactic visuals of Monsoon Wedding, a 2001 art-house hit filmed in Delhi. The movie's title could not have been more misleading. In Delhi, weddings are rare in the rainy season. (Imagine a baraat splashing along in a flooded street and everyone dancing while clutching umbrellas!)

Instead, it’s wintertime for weddings. During the cold months, some select days are considered so auspicious by astrologers that literally thousands of couples tie the knot during that period. For instance, on December 13 last year, an estimated 30,000 weddings were solemnized in Delhi.

These joyful unions pose problems for ordinary citizens. A senior police official was recently quoted by The Times of India that, "the reasons for the traffic jams in the city are many, ranging from the added number of vehicles on the roads and inadequate parking space to the movement of baraats."

Sometimes these baraat blockades could have dangerous consequences. Delhi-based media professional Manika Dhama, while driving home to suburban Noida, found herself in the cavalcade of a rich man's baraat that had not just one mare but an entire circus of extravagantly decorated camels and horses. Some of the commuters were so infuriated that they thrashed the groom's father right there on the road! "I couldn’t believe what I had seen," Ms. Dhama said.

Exceptions apart, most commuters tend to be more understanding. After all, many of them are married.


The First Glimpse



The Merry Band

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The Sound of Music



The Merry People



The Man of the Hour

Miranda House Memories: 3 Years, 1 Degree, and 0 Men

A girl's life in Delhi's premier college for women.
[By Manika Dhama; she is a Delhi-based media professional.]

I'm lucky to be a Delhi girl. Many women colleges here are considered the best in the country. However, recently there were rumors of converting them to co-ed institutions. While it surely excited men, most feared a decline in the "standards". The co-ed advocates counter-argued that the same sex colleges discourage "healthy interaction" between men and women. It could be true but whether that affected my mental or physical health remains debatable.

You see I'm a product of one of these colleges.

Oh, You Are From Miranda House!

Few years back, when I secured admission in Miranda House, a women college, my parents were more than thrilled. (They don't trust the boys.) The first few days there were spent getting used to seeing too many women all around. The only men were those who dozed behind files in the college office, besides the road-side Romeos outside the entrance.

Some people also tend to confuse women colleges as battle grounds of firebrand feminism where one is instilled with hatred towards anything male. I hate to disappoint but there were no such lessons in Miranda. The college library never displayed titles like Men are from Mars, women are not, so kill them all.

Another battle I had to fight was against being stereotyped. Every college in Delhi is weighed down by its "reputation". You are in this college therefore you are like that. You are in Lady Shri Ram College (LSR) so you are haughty and would not condescend to interact with others. You are in Mata Sundari College so you are clearly the biggest loser on the planet. I was in Miranda House so obviously I would divorce my future-husband within weeks of marriage.

Not surprisingly, trying to escape the stereotypes became a defining part of our college life. But there were long-term consequences, too.

There are many men (and their mommies) afraid of forging matrimonial alliances with women from so-and-so colleges. Such girls are considered "fast"! (Perhaps the men are slow and cannot keep up.) I have heard tales of parents who feared that their darling daughter, by getting enrolled in some uppity girls' college, would become "unmarriageable" because she would not be able to "adjust" in her married home. One could understand their plight. After all, there are fewer things scarier than an opinionated girl.

Girls Only Life


[Manika (extreme left) with friends]
A friend once wished for mixed-sex education so that we could see how men would react to certain lectures. The teacher did not find it exciting. Was it a loss? Perhaps yes. Our classroom discussions often ended up being quite linear because there wasn't a male outlook to add. Whether one would have benefited from these perspectives is not for me to say. But it would most certainly have been different from the experience one had.

But did we miss the boys? Let's confess: the college sans men was no torture and since one could not handpick the boys' one wanted as classmates, it was better to not have them around at all.

Besides, we had a rollicking time. During those three years, our "all women" experience was fun-filled. We were carefree, but also sensible. We never bunked classes. We never ate in the college canteen (the food was bad). But we overused our family cars. We showered more attention on "dramatics" than in academic studies. On more than one occasion we were thrown out of a restaurant for being "too loud".

Okay, we did bemoan the absence of men but didn't miss them very much. True, they hovered in our conversations but they never took center stage of our lives. Perhaps it was good since making fun of them was a lot easier in their absence.

And then, one morning, suddenly we discovered that the college days were over!

Epilogue

In the end (in many ways, the beginning), the college shaped me as an individual but its stereotypes did not define me. Miranda House memories will be cherished for ever.