Love, Loans & Lehengas: The Great Kashmiri Wedding Trap

(MENAFN- Kashmir Observer)
Representational Photo

By Aliya Manzoor

In Kashmir, marriage is no longer just about love, companionship, or commitment. It's about wealth, status, and extravagance. The emphasis has shifted from building a life together to proving a point to society, neighbors, and social media followers.

For a middle-class groom, the road to marriage is no less than a battle. He's expected to carry the weight of societal expectations, financial burdens, and outdated customs. He's doing all this while trying to start a new chapter in life.

It begins with the pressure to secure a government job. Without it, the boy is labeled unworthy and incapable of supporting a wife. But that's just the beginning. He must also have a car, a large home, a thriving business, and an untarnished social image. And then comes the crushing blow: the dowry.

Despite religious teachings that emphasize mercy and simplicity, dowry or Maher has become a symbol of prestige, not compassion. In many cases, the demand isn't less than ten lakhs, turning what should be a sacred obligation into a humiliating transaction. It reduces marriage to a business deal, a price tag, an unspoken auction.

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Often, the Nikah and Rukhsati are separated by years, giving families more time to inflate expectations. The groom, caught in this storm, turns to desperate measures. He takes loans from friends, uses his mother's jewelry, mortgages the family home, or dips into his father's retirement savings. He may even drain his business account just to meet the crushing demands of a single event.

We've turned a simple life event into an extravagant spectacle. Weddings, once joyous and personal, have become intimidating, unaffordable, and often destructive. The result? Delayed marriages, emotional trauma, financial ruin, and a generation unable to move forward. Children are growing up in households weighed down by debt and stress. Young men buckle under pressure. Young women, disillusioned by society, either turn away from marriage or fall into toxic patterns: drug use, unhealthy relationships, depression.

If one wedding costs twenty lakhs, the next must cost fifty. We are not just competing; we are destroying. Parents fuel this madness too, pushing their sons to earn more, achieve more, and throw a wedding that becomes the talk of the town, no matter the cost.

This race for grandeur has erased the soul of marriage. The pressure has become unbearable. We are being merciless to our boys and blind to the consequences. We talk about change, but no one dares to act. We speak of simplicity, but fail to practice it. We celebrate extravagance and shun humility.

The truth is, marriage shouldn't be a life-threatening event. It shouldn't bankrupt families or shatter dreams.

It's time we stop turning weddings into a contest and start honoring them as the sacred, beautiful bonds they are meant to be. If we don't break this toxic cycle now, we will leave behind a legacy of burden for the generations to come.

• – A Sociology postgrad, the author writes incisively on social dynamics.

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