My daughter has many Indian classmates at Berkeley. From her, I learned that many Indian girls fantasize about either the bride or groom arriving by elephant,
the way American girls dream of a limo ride. So I wasn’t entirely surprised by this articlein the San Diego paper:
“Oh, my God,” gasped Maryam Rahimian.
About 200 people surrounded the Asian elephant as she curled her trunk playfully in front of the Westin San Diego hotel yesterday. There were wedding
guests dressed in embroidered saris, tourists in T-shirts and businessmen who paused on their way to work downtown. “Yesterday, when they said there
would be an elephant, I thought it was an April Fools’ joke,” said Majid Rahimian, the father of the bride. But no joke. As a surprise gift, Ranni
Hillyer, the mother of the groom, hired Tai to carry her son for three city blocks during his wedding procession. “Every young Indian man needs to
have an abundance at his wedding, and the elephant is an abundant animal,” said Hillyer, who lives downtown and works as an assistant to the CEO of
a private-equity firm.
I have often wondered: is there an inverse relationship between the lavishness of the wedding and the health of
the marriage? If so, does that relationship hold equally for a culture like the Indian or Persian cultures, which have low probabilities of divorce and
at least partially “arranged” marriages? Dr J sez to class: Discuss.