The Forgotten Grace of Punjabi Wedding

As the summer months wane and give way to autumn and winter, one can be certain of the arrival of the wedding season and along with it the arrival of invitations, expensive chocolates (for 'mithai' is out of fashion now), macaroons (French ones, of course), curated hampers etc. Much before ogling on the screens of our cells to watch what is happening at the wedding of one of the richest families in the country became our national pastime, there was a time when weddings were much more meaningful and much less materialistic.

- Gurnoor Grewal Chandigarh

Much before the trend of celebrating weddings on a grand scale and letting money flow like water became our mainstay, the golden generation (our grandparents' generation, for they are celebrating their golden jubilees now) celebrated weddings by commissioning a poet to write a 'Sehra', a poem commemorating the union of two individuals and asking for the choicest of blessings from God for the happy union. Great poets like Ghalib and Zauk too wrote Sehras for grooms on their wedding. Not many of these Sehras survive (Ghalib's wedding Sehra does; it's available online to see, but then he was Ghalib, no ordinary man) and clearly in the 21st century the art of commissioning a Sehra is long gone. Frank