Its muddle and befuddlements still brewing another torrid summer has passed into history. Islamabad, the city, indifferent to the villainy of its masters, once again wears green, an emerald set on velvet. The soft warm sun that rises obliquely from behind the modular structure of the Supreme Court pays no heed to points lawmen raise and judgments their lordships deliver. It does its ordained work salubriating the morning chill as tree tops on Pir Sohawa light up to a golden hue. Donkeys scampering to construction sites stop to nibble a fresh blade of grass; rag pickers shuffle through garbage heaps as crows and mynas eye balding walkers break into a jog thinking no one’s watching. And in almost every mohalla and street veers (brothers) of doting sisters await riding their steeds while newly-weds wake up to unknown worlds the season of nuptials has ushered them into.

Islamabad, like the rest of the country, is abuzz with weddings. Marriage halls and hotels are all booked. For instant wedlocks, if there be any, there’s no place to tie the knot that is now done in at least four stages — maiyon, mehndi, baraat and valima. Among the well to do with flowing fund supplies the ceremonies multiply till some kind of fatigue sets in. Dholki ceremonies are held at the bride’s place, at the groom’s place, and wherever the friends of the two families wish to hold a rumpus. Uncles and aunts, maternal and paternal, organise a dholki tournament of sorts till the couple cannot hold it any longer. Dholkis are song and dance sessions but the rich now also arrange mujras, musical soirees and comic shows featuring TV mimics, comedians and lampooners in the tradition of village mirasis. Youngsters in Islamabad are having a capital time. With never a dull moment, winter is just warming up as lucky veers, gear up to do their sisters’ bidding. “My brother mounts the mare” sing the girls ignoring the implicit ribaldry of the song.

The time between the two Eids is the preferred period for solemnising betrothals and starting new families. If one has no marriages of one’s own to suffer through there are relatives and friends around who are going to rob one of one’s peace, purse and digestion if willy-nilly one RSVPs one’s concurrence to the invitation or face excommunication from the clan, if one dares the ‘regrets only’ option. It’s an unmitigated torture both ways. Was not one’s own matrimony enough to suffer other folks’ too? The hosts need to understand this. Secondly, the insipid food at five star dinner receptions is not worth the trouble. For God’s sake who relishes those sticky salads, those defrosted meats and utterly bland curries from those heavy plates standing, when dal chawal missis has cooked to your taste await you, sitting. And then, as if attending a wedding reception were not a sacrifice in itself, one ought to bring a gift too that nobody was going to thank you for. You could even be ridiculed for bringing that — ‘oh another wall clock!’

The cumbersome ceremonies are becoming more and more cumbersome. The elaborate wedding functions being shown in TV plays seem to be setting the standard. Now the groom too is as heavily dressed up in crude embroidered achkans, stoles and exotic pugrees as the bride in her five-kg designer lehnga suit. This gross vulgarisation of chic and sheer wastefulness is being termed the richness of our culture. And it is a pity our young people who should be objecting to the ostentation and garish ways of their elders have become a bunch of conformists. This is a grave decline in character that society by and large is failing to notice. The young people seem to have no idealism, no sense of reality, no spark of rebellion in them. But this is what happens in closed undemocratic societies. The youth loses its guts, its essential character to see right and stand up. The spineless culture of the darbar kills a people’s manhood.

The scene today is of a standardised milieu. We have no odd couples and no veers who would dismount the gaunt steed and say no to claptrap. Not only elopements have gone out of style, even love marriages solemnised in secret have become extinct. Now only village belles elope. City brides must have their dholkis and mehndis and the rest. Not Rehana whom newsman Syed Fazle Salim Asmi wedded in army shrink Akhtar Ahsen’s the Mall Hostel apartment over tea and later aloo gosht from Cafi de Vogie’s across the road.

We were less than a dozen in all including the bridegroom in his Sunday best, that is, a jaunty buttonless shirt and faded corduroy trousers. The bride was closeted with the elderly wife of Radio Pakistan’s Ibrahim Salim (the silent), a stock Cafi de Vogie’s intellectual. An uneasy maulvi espied us with suspicion and would have fled but for Akhtar Ahsen’s credible portrayal of a responsible elder. The bride was not dressed for the occasion so T&T’s Mohammad Ali who owned an NSU moped and Ayub Malik of AJK’s Forest Department, were dispatched to bring at least a red dupatta to cover the would-be’s head. This cost them Rs8 from Moti Bazaar. Safdar Mughal, a PIA engineer, who had an 8mm movie camera, captured us all lined up in the verandah outside. Photographer Zaidis got this static movie developed from Karachi as Rawalpindi had no such facility then. Thus was Salim Asmi inducted into wedlock and thus he stays happily to this day. Amen.

Another convention buster was the valima reception of Maulvi Saeed’s son Zafar Iqbal who became CDA chairman in the nineties. The entire community of Rawalpindi’s newsmen and other elite were gathered in the modest bungalow of the venerable late Maulvi Saeed who was then Pakistan Times’ Resident Editor. A journalist of pre-Pakistan Dawn vintage, Maulvi Sahib was a die hard traditionalist. Yet even he could do a thing or two. It was a revolutionary menu for a feast of that kind on a first son’s wedding. Placed in earthen koondas were roast gram, amlok (black persemum like berries that village children munch during school recess), revrees, peanuts and pink Kashmiri tea. A classical sitar played in the background. We munched the chanas, sipped the tea and felicitated Zafar Iqbal for reducing simplicity to its barest minimum.